Trixy hesitated; she dearly loved a secret, but of late her secrets had not been as well kept as she would like. Still, she promised, and the new letter was soon under way, and at the top was written, "Dictated to Rear Admiral Allison, retired, by Her Serene Highness the Infanta Trixy." The Admiral put the original and uncompleted letter into his pocket, intending to burn it and destroy the ashes, although what might happen, should there be any enquiries for it, he was sure he did not know; perhaps it might be well for him to hurry off to Washington, or somewhere.
When the new letter was completed Trixy and the Admiral took it to the post-office, and the old man, in endeavoring to impress upon Trixy the advisability of keeping the matter a secret while both of them remained at Old Point, exerted his diplomatic faculties to an extent unparalleled during his entire term of service as an officer. He loathed the idea of teaching duplicity to a child, but in the circumstances it seemed entirely justifiable.
As the day waned, most of the ladies retired to dress for dinner, and Trif, whose conscience had been reproaching her all day for neglect of her husband, to whom she knew her letters were unspeakably welcome, and to whom she dearly loved to write when she chanced to be away from him, determined to finish the letter begun the day before.
"Fenie," she soon said through the door between the rooms, "have you been to my portfolio?"
"No, dear. I've done no writing."
"How strange. I'd begun a letter to Phil, and now I can't find it."
Fenie said something playful about mislaid affection, but Trif did not laugh, for she remembered what she had written. Still, why should she worry? No one but the chambermaid could have been in the room, and she doubted whether colored chambermaids at the South could read. The letter would turn up in the course of time; meanwhile she would write a hasty note to Phil and enclose Trixy's, just as it was, in time for the mail by the evening boat, which would close in a few minutes, and Trixy, who never was specially dressed for dinner, could take the letter down to the office.
The Admiral strolled over to the fort and the club, where he met a semi-public man who was talking to the Commandant about a promising gold "placer" on the Pacific coast which had proved so alluring that he had lost a lot of money in trying to develop it. The Commandant had known of this same placer, for he had been stationed near it at one time; the Admiral also had seen it, for he had been taken to it one day by some men who had hoped to extract some of his savings from him. Lack of water was the trouble, and the Admiral, who had looked carefully over the ground, had devised a plan whereby water might be brought by a tortuous route from a stream several miles distant. When he said this to the semi-public man that person replied:
"Give me your plan, and if it is practicable you shall have a large block of stock, for nothing, in the company I'll organize to work it."