"My child! O, my child!" she murmured at last, as her long taper fingers were clasping themselves tightly together. "I have wronged you. It was cruel, fiendish, to take your babe from you; but doubly so—wretch that I am!—to plot her ruin by sending her off to a foreign port, where I thought she could never return. What a curse has fallen upon me! I did not intend all that was done. Those terrible black stains cannot be upon my soul."
The autumnal winds came and blew gently over the great city, scattering upon the tree-tops and velvety carpets of its many parks and lawns their tracery of change. The birds gathered themselves together among the branches to finish their arrangements for the long journey. Yet Mrs. Belmont lingered in her pleasant quarters, loth to exchange them for less comfortable ones. Then letters of inquiry, letters of solicitation, had been written, and answers must be waited for—and so she stayed.
All this time the two colonels were slowly but positively improving. George St. Clair might endure the jar and fatigue of travel, and Pearl Hamilton his former position at the head of his regiment, and word was sent to their respective destinations to this effect.
"In a week Pearl and Lillian will be here," was the report brought by Mrs. Cheevers on returning one day from a short round of calls, and her air was a trifle exultant. "We must do them honor, Mr. Cheevers. A colonel who has suffered and bled for our good, and to maintain the dignity of a free government, deserves all the glory an appreciative people can bestow."
The husband straightened himself back in his chair, and indulged in a most mirthful "encore." "Bravo, wife! The war is making personal developments as well. Who ever imagined there was so much of the truly eloquent in the bosom of my sweet little half? And such patriotism!"
"Pshaw! All of that fine speech, I tell you, came from the brain where such evolutions of respect for the brave boys are expected to be in action. We must give honor where honor is due."
"True as you live, wife; and now what is to be done?"
"Perhaps Charlotte can suggest, for if our fraternal strife has not awakened as much patriotism in her heart as in yours, in the present case her interest should be greater."
The lady thus appealed to was listening with more interest than her companions were aware of, but the queries that were perplexing her were not how she could bestow honors upon the worthy, but how she, the unworthy, could escape dishonor! "I cannot stay longer," she thought; "I must away!" At being thus appealed to, however, she replied blandly; "I have waited weeks already that I might bestow my congratulations, but, as they have delayed coming so long, have made other arrangements that will be impossible to postpone. I have been loitering that letters from home might reach me, and cannot understand why Charles does not write. In a day or two, at the farthest, I shall be compelled to leave for my winter quarters."
"Leave here!" exclaimed Mrs. Cheevers, with surprise.