"Yes, I will surrender," he said, as his eyes gleamed with sudden comprehension of his great triumph, "but I've held you back till the last company of our division has passed the river and is safe."
CHAPTER XXIII
OUT OF THE FOREST
The retreating brigade, the river behind it and the pursuit seemingly lost on the farther shore, passed on in the golden sunshine of the morning through, a country of gentle hills, green fields and scattered forest.
It was joined three hours after sunrise by no less a person than Mr. Sefton himself, fresh, immaculate and with no trace of discomposure on his face. He was on horseback, and told them he had just come across the fields from another division of the army not more than three miles away. He gave the news in a quiet tone, without any special emphasis upon the more important passages. The South had been compelled to give ground; Grant had lost more than fifty thousand men, but he was coming through the Wilderness and would not be denied. He was still fighting as if he had just begun, and reinforcements were constantly pouring forward to take the places of the fallen in his ranks.
Prompted by a motive which even his own analytical mind could not define, the Secretary sought Lucia Catherwood. He admired her height, her strength and resolved beauty—knew that she was of a type as admirable as it was rare, and wondered once or twice why he did not love her instead of Helen Harley. Here was a woman with a mind akin to his own—bold, keen and penetrating. And that face and figure! He wished he could see her in a drawing-room, dressed as she should be, and with the lights burning softly overhead. Then she would be indeed a princess, if there were any such beings, in the true meaning of the word, on this earth. She would be a fit wife for a great man—the greater half of himself.
But he did not love her; he loved Helen Harley—the Secretary confessed it to himself with a smothered half-sigh. At times he was pleased with this sole and recently discovered weak spot in his nature, because it brought to him some fresh and pleasing emotions, not at all akin to any that he had ever felt before; but again it troubled him, as a flaw in his armour. His love for Helen Harley might interfere with his progress—in fact, was doing so already, but he said to himself he could not help it. Now he was moved to talk to Lucia Catherwood. Dismounting from his horse, he took a place by her side.
She was walking near the rear of the column and there were others not many feet away, but she was alone in the truest sense, having a feeling of personal detachment and aloofness. These people were kind to her, and yet there was a slight difference in their manner toward her and toward one another—a difference almost imperceptible and perhaps not intended, but sufficient to show her that she was not of them. Just now it gave her such a sense of loneliness and exclusion that she almost welcomed the smile of the Secretary when he spoke to her. As ready to recognize the power in him as he was to note her own strong and keen mind, she waited guardedly to hear what he had to say.