“Oh, if I could only do something for the poor soul,” she thought to herself and, on the impulse, rose to her feet and slipped out into the hall unnoticed.
She had no very clear idea of just what she wanted to do. Her action was wholly governed by the sympathy aroused by the man’s evident suffering. She opened the front door and ran lightly along the gallery until she came to the end of it, then peered round the corner toward the window where she had seen the face. The illumination inside had not been so bright that her eyes did not quickly accustom themselves to the darkness without, but she rubbed them to be sure that she was not mistaken, for there was no one in sight. In reality the time that had passed between her first glimpse of the mysterious man and her search for him was so very short that it was hard to believe that the stranger had vanished so quickly; however he was nowhere to be seen and, for his own sake, Dorothea dared not go farther.
Instead she turned swiftly to slip back into the house, but in so doing she ran into a figure hurrying along the gallery.
“Oh!” she cried involuntarily, stepping aside. For an instant she could not see who it was. “Is it you, April?” she asked, dimly making out her cousin’s figure.
“Yes,” came the answer, after a moment’s hesitation. “I—I—what are you doing here, Dorothea?”
The English girl was not minded to explain, yet she disliked concealing the truth. On the other hand to tell this fanatical Southern girl that she believed an escaped prisoner had been there would be to put the man in jeopardy at once. A hue and cry after the poor fellow would be started, and Dorothea would do a good deal to avoid that. In the end she was not forced to answer.
“Dorothea,” April said breathlessly, coming nearer and lowering her voice, “please go in, and don’t tell any one that I am out here. Please go.”
Without a word Dorothea went, slipped back into her place unnoticed, but she was vastly puzzled over April’s mysterious action, for it was impossible to believe that her Rebel cousin could have anything to do with an escaping Yankee prisoner. She shook her head as other explanations crowded in upon her, finding no satisfactory solution to the puzzle.
When at last her good-nights were said and Dorothea was back in her room making ready for bed, she quickly dismissed Lucy and sat down in front of the fire, her thoughts filled with the day’s experiences.
That her welcome had been a hearty and a loving one she had no doubt. For her own part she felt a growing affection for these American relatives; but she was still greatly perplexed to find herself in the midst of so much gayety and laughter during a fiercely fought war. The face she had seen at the window was so filled with misery that the cheerfulness of her surroundings seemed, not quite right and brought back to her mind a vivid recollection of the wretchedness she had witnessed on her brief passage through the Confederate Army. Could it be that those behind the Southern fighting line did not care what was happening to their soldiers?