Only God's eye, or the soul of the mother who bore him, could understand what he felt. The realization of his love for Jennie brought a new fear into his heart. His nerve was put daily to supreme test in the dangerous work in which he was engaged. A single mistake would start an investigation sure to end with a rope around his neck. Love had given life a new meaning. The chatter of the squirrels in the Capitol Square was all about their homes and babies in the tree tops. The song of birds in the old flower garden on Church Hill made his heart thump with a joy that was agony. The flowers were just bursting into full bloom and their perfume filled the air with the lazy dreaming of the southern spring.
He must speak his love. His heart would burst with its beating. His mate must know. And she had returned to Richmond with a bitterness against the North that was something new in the development of her character.
The newspapers of Richmond had published an elaborate account of the sacking of her father's house, the smashing of its furniture and theft of its valuables. It had created a profound sensation. There was no mistaking the passion with which she had told this story.
He had laughed at first over the fun of winning the fairest little rebel in the South and carrying his bride away a prize of war, against the combined efforts of his Southern rivals. His love and pride had not doubted for a moment that her heart would yield to the man she loved no matter what uniform he might wear at the end of this war.
He couldn't make up his mind to ask her to marry him until she should know his real name and his true principles.
What would she do if the truth were revealed? His heart fairly stopped its beating at the thought. The fall of Richmond he now regarded as a practical certainty. The Merrimac had proven a vain hope to the Confederacy.
McClellan was landing his magnificent army on the Peninsula and preparing to sweep all before him. McDowell's forty thousand men were moving on his old line of march straight from Washington. Their two armies would unite before the city and circle it with an invincible wall of fire and steel. Fremont, Milroy and Banks were sweeping through the valley of the Shenandoah. Their armies would unite, break the connections of the Confederacy at Lynchburg and the South would be crushed.
That this would all be accomplished within thirty days he had the most positive assurances from Washington. So sure was Miss Van Lew of McClellan's triumphant entry into Richmond she had put her house in order for his reception. Her parlor had been scrupulously cleaned. Its blinds were drawn and the room dark, but a flag staff was ready and a Union standard concealed in one of her feather beds. Over the old house on Church Hill the emblem of the Nation would first be flung to the breeze in the conquered Capital of the Confederacy.
The certainty of his discovery in the rush of the Union army into the city was now the nightmare which haunted his imagination.
He could fight the Confederate Government on even terms. He asked no odds. His life was on the hazard. Something more than the life of a Union spy was at stake in his affair with Jennie. Her life and happiness were bound in his. He felt this by an unerring instinct.