tell
others? It would only bind three more souls on the rack. "Vanished with
the dagger!" That would be all they could gasp, first amazed, then
scandalized, at a scheme of safe-keeping so fantastically reckless;
reckless and fantastical as her so-called marriage. Yes, they would be
as scandalized as they would have been charmed had the scheme prospered.
And then they would blame not her but Hilary. Blame him in idle fear of
a calamity that was not going to befall!

She might have told that sternest, kindest, wisest of friends, Doctor
Sevier. As the family's trustee he might yet have to be told. But on
that night of fantastical recklessness he had been away, himself at
Corinth to show them there how to have vastly better hospitals, and to
prescribe for his old friend Beauregard. He had got back but yesterday.
Or she might have told the gray detective, just to make him more
careful, as Hilary, by letter, suggested. In part she had told him,
through Flora; told him that to save that old curio she would risk her
life. Surely, knowing that, he would safeguard it, in whatever hands,
and return it the moment he could. Who ever heard of a detective not
returning a thing the moment he could? Not Flora, _not_ yet Madame, they
said. To be sure, thought Anna, those professional masters of delay, the
photographers, might be more jewel-wise than trustworthy, but what
photographer could ever be so insane as to rob a detective? So, rather
ashamed of one small solicitude in this day of great ones, she urged her
committees for final reports--which never came--and felt very wisely in
writing her hero for his consent to things, and to assure him that at
the worst her own part of the family estate would make everything good,
the only harrowing question being how to keep Miranda and Connie from
sharing the loss.

On the first Sunday evening in April Doctor Sevier took tea with the
Callenders, self-invited, alone and firmly oblivious of his own tardy
wedding-gift to Anna as it gleamed at him on the board. To any of a
hundred hostesses he would have been a joy, to share with as many
friends as he would consent to meet; for in the last week he had eaten
"hog and hominy," and sipped corn-meal coffee, in lofty colloquy with
Sidney Johnston and his "big generals"; had talked confidentially with
Polk, so lately his own bishop; had ridden through the miry streets of
Corinth with all the New Orleans commanders of division or
brigade--Gibson, Trudea