"What a useless, helpless thing I am!" she said to her aunt one evening as they sat alone, after the husband, who was wearied with his day's toils in the unpretentious hardware store near the wharf had retired to his room, and Grace was entertaining a friend in the parlor. "It seems to me I am suddenly aroused by a storm, and unless I run for my life shall be covered out of sight in its fury!" She laughed, but there was a seriousness in her pale face her aunt had never seen upon it before.
"I do not wonder you think yourself out in the wind," was the cheerful response, "for Grace is enough to stir up the sleepy faculties of any lover of her country. I do not know but she will 'shoulder arms' and go into the field in defence of her native land!" and the good lady laughed outright. There was a long silence, while Lillian never once removed her gaze from the dying embers in the grate as she actively traced the wanderings and leapings of her busy thoughts.
At last she said in an undertone: "Grace is very gentle considering her confederate proclivities; but has it occurred to you that I have a husband somewhere in that confusion and excitement among our enemies, as we call them?"
"O, Lillian!" and the cheerful face put on a look of serious incredulity. "You will not now certainly desire to seek out a relationship from among a people, who would, if in their power, kill or enslave us all?" Lillian's dark eyes wandered slowly to the troubled face of the speaker. "I have fully joined with my daughter in the feeling that a great wrong has been perpetrated on you, still I did hope that this terrible war would obliterate forever all such former ties and leave you free, as free as though they had never been!"
"And here I am shocking you with my heart's cry for its idol, for its tenderest loves, for the purest longings known to woman's nature! Listen to me, Aunt Sylvia, I am going north! The blow has been struck! Fort Sumter has fallen! There will be wounded hearts to bind up and wounded bodies to care for! Sorrow and lamentation will fill many homes, and the cry for help and sympathy will sound over the land. I shall get out of my life of indolence and plunge into the thickest scenes of labor!"
"Yes, Lillian, you do shock me! Why go north? If you must work, will there not be plenty of it to do among your own people? Are they not as deserving of your care and sympathy as their enemies?"
"Auntie, I have told Grace and now will tell you! Somewhere in the north I have a husband and child! Do not look at me with that spirit of incredulity peering out of your eyes, for it is no random suspicion—no new thought. My husband lives, and the letter I received last night from George St. Clair gives me the information that a 'Pearl Hamilton,' who started with a captain's commission from Pennsylvania was promoted to the position of colonel of his regiment by the entire vote of each company upon reaching Washington. This he copied from a paper for my especial benefit; and that Colonel Hamilton is my husband; my Pearl! He is true to me—our hearts are one, and the fast growing desire to go to him has, since the receipt of that letter, become full-fledged; and before communication between the two sections is entirely cut off I shall go!"
"Did not the knowledge of his notoriety help to feather the wings of love, my child?"
There was something in the tone of voice with which these words were uttered that caused the listener's face to flush with amazement and indignation.
"This from you, Auntie!" she said at last. "Look at me; remember what I have endured, realize for a moment from what I have been torn, consider the burdens that are weighing me down, and then, if it be possible, repeat the question. You do not know me! For this reason I forgive the cruel thrust! Pearl Hamilton would hold my heart as firmly and truly if he were now the humble clerk in the store where I first knew him, as an honored officer in the enemy's army!"