Mrs. Moseley had judiciously expended a portion of the money left by Mike for the benefit of his sister, and her short, red skirt and black jacket had given place to a brown dress with white cuffs and collars, exchanged on Sundays for a fine, dark blue one with embroidered frills.
The mail came twice a week to the fort, and every mail brought Judy two or more letters from Ran; for he wrote nearly every day. The desire to answer all Ran’s letters was a great spur to improvement in Judy, who, showing all her compositions to Mrs. Moseley, begging her to correct the spelling, grammar and punctuation, and then carefully studying these corrections before making the clean copy that finally went to her betrothed, made greater progress in her education than she could have accomplished under any other circumstances.
Ran kept her advised of everything that happened to him, and his latest communications assured her that his cause was going on swimmingly, though, of course, there were, necessarily, “law’s delays.”
To corroborate this, Mrs. Moseley received occasional letters from her old schoolmate, Mrs. Samuel Walling, who gave her chapter after chapter of what she called this romance in real life; how much the hero of it was admired by all to whom she had introduced him; how from his dark beauty and grace he was dubbed the Oriental Prince; how he was taken up by every one in society except the Vansitarts, who, in the interests of their late governess and favorite, and with idiotic obstinacy, disallowed a claim that every one else was forced to admit; last of all, how young Randolph Hay had discovered a lovely cousin, and sole surviving relative, in Palma Hay Stuart, the only child of his late Uncle James Jordan Hay, and the wife of Cleve Stuart, a man of fortune from Mississippi.
Much of this information—all of it, in fact, except that which concerned his “lionizing”—Ran had faithfully imparted to Judy. And she rejoiced in his present prosperity and future prospects.
Judy had but one source of anxiety—her Brother Mike! Three letters she had received from him since he took leave of her in September; but these had reached her at intervals of a week or ten days apart, and since the last of these three, two months had passed and she had heard nothing.
There were times when she grew very much distressed, and felt almost sure that the party of adventurers to which Mike belonged had been massacred.
On this splendid November morning Judy, sitting at the window, with her grammar in hand, was more than usually downcast.
First, there was the news that had come to her from her betrothed, that he was to sail for England about the first of December with Mr. Will Walling, to go through certain forms, preliminary to taking possession of the Hay estate and ousting the present usurper; his absence must be indefinite; but he would return as soon as possible—he hoped in two months’ time at the furthest. That news depressed the girl very much; but that was not all. The mail that brought Ran’s letter brought none from Mike. It was at least her twentieth disappointment, but she felt it as bitterly as if it had been her first.
“What is the matter, Judy?” at length inquired the colonel’s wife, noticing the dejected countenance of her protégée.