'Then so it is?' she asked.
'Unless the past disqualifies me,' he said. 'I have spoken to no one yet, except little Dickie. When I thought I ought to find some present employment, and wanted to take a clerkship at Bramshaw's, Dr. May made me promise to wait till I had seen you before I fixed on anything; but my mind is made up, and I shall speak now—with your blessing on it, Ave.'
'I knew it!' she said.
He saw it was safer to quit this subject, and asked for Henry.
'He sent his love. He met us at New York. He is grown so soldierly, with such a black beard, that he is more grown out of knowledge than any of us, but I scarcely saw him, for he was quite overset at my appearance, and Tom thought it did me harm. I wish our new sister would have come to see me.
'Sister!'
'Oh, did you not know? I thought Tom had written! She is a Virginian lady, whose first husband was a doctor, who died of camp-fever early in the war. A Federal, of course. And they are to be married as soon as Charleston has fallen.'
Leonard smiled. And Averil expressed her certainty that it had fallen by that time.
'And he is quite Americanized?' asked Leonard. 'Does he return to our own name! No? Then I do not wonder he did not wish for me. Perhaps he may yet bear to meet me, some day when we are grown old.'
'At least we can pray to be altogether, where one is gone already' said Averil. 'That was the one comfort in parting with the dear Cora—my blessing through all the worst! Leonard, she would not go to live in the fine house her father has taken at New York, but she is gone to be one of the nurses in the midst of all the hospital miseries. And, oh, what comfort she will carry with her!'