"George will write a few words every day and mail it once a week," was the glad response to the inquiry as to how they were to hear from him. "And in a month, the physician says, he will probably be able to travel a short distance each day, and will get to his chair at our table before it is very cold. He has ordered me to engage rooms for us all at the hotel for the winter, but I hate hotels, and it is so cozy here!"
"Anna and I would be very lonely without you now," interposed the widow, calmly. "Our rooms are small, but we have a goodly number of them."
"And I will call it 'Maple Grove Inn' and write that I have secured a suite of rooms ample for us all! Bravo! And I want to learn to make pies and cakes and put my own hands into the biscuits, for I am a Yankee girl from henceforth! No more black fingers in my bread. Dear old Katy," she said, after a moment's pause. "How good everything tasted that her poor old ebony hands made! If I could find such a noble looking northerner as Lillian has for her husband he wouldn't have to ask me more than once to be his wife!"
"Lillian's husband, my child?" interrogated both father and mother in a breath.
"Certainly; but I have not told you. One cannot say everything in an hour!" And then the story was reproduced with the details George had added, having known it for months, yes almost a year and never told it, not forgetting her abstracted manner as the disappearance of Lily Gaylord was rehearsed. "One might have imagined to look at her that the girl was a near kin. She asked me about her general appearance, and when I said that some thought there was a very striking resemblance between her and Mrs. Gaylord's adopted daughter you ought to have seen the look!"
"You are quite imaginative, my dear," remarked Mrs. St. Clair warmly. "It was the shock, her mother being with Lily at the time that gave her the look you speak of. I do not wonder, for there was room at least for censure!"
"That's a fact, wife! I should like to know where the mistress of Rosedale is keeping herself? Bertha writes that she disappeared soon after leaving the city, and Charles has never heard from her since. Didn't meet her in Washington I suppose?"
"No, Father," and a hearty laugh followed. When quiet was restored Ellen asked: "Where is Charles, Father?"
"Skulking around without doubt for fear of being drafted, and the negroes have it all their own way at Rosedale now, I believe."
That night as the mother and daughter were left alone, the former interrupted a prolonged silence by the abrupt question: "Anna, my child, what about this George St. Clair? Has a secret crept into your confiding heart that you would keep hidden from the careful, watchful eye of your parent? Tell me, what about this rebel colonel?"