Abbot looked with undisguised perplexity into his mother's face.
"You surprise me very much, mother; I cannot, see how Viva would betray such an idea, even if she had it; it is not like her."
"Women see these things where men cannot," was the somewhat sententious reply. "Besides, Paul—"
"Well, mother, besides—?"
"Mrs. Winthrop has told me as much."
That evening, before returning to camp, Lieutenant Abbot went round the square—or what is the Bostonian equivalent therefor—and surprised Miss Winthrop with a call. He told her what he had not told his mother, that Colonel Raymond that morning received a telegram from Washington saying that on the following Tuesday they must be in readiness to start.
"We have been good friends always, Viva," he said; "but you have been something more to me than that. I did not mean to make so sudden an avowal, but soldiers have no time to call their own just now, and every hour has been given up to duty with the regiment. Now this sharp summons comes and I must go. If I return, shall we—" (he had almost said, "shall we fulfil our manifest destiny, and make our parents happy?" but had sense enough to realize that she was entitled to a far more personal proposition). He broke off nervously.
"You have always been so dear to me, Viva. Will you be my wife?"
She was sitting on the sofa, nervously twisting the cords of a fan in and out among her slender white fingers. Her eyes were downcast and her cheeks suffused. For an instant she looked up and a question seemed trembling on her lips. She was a truthful woman and no coward. There was something she was entitled to know, something the heart within her craved to know, yet she knew not how to ask, or, if she did, was too proud to frame the words, to plead for that thing of all others which a woman prizes and glories in, yet will never knowingly beg of any man—his honest and outspoken love. She looked down again, silent.
His tone softened and his voice quivered a little as he bent over her.