"In the afternoon.—We are friends! Now I feel worse than I did before, because I am deseving somebody that likes me."
"What does this mean?" thought the General, when he had read these remarkable disclosures. "Is Gay a girl? Is he my nephew or my niece, or somebody else altogether! If he—she—has been cheating me all this time I shall never forgive him—her, I mean."
Then, stifling his conscience by saying that he was not spying, but looking into something that needed to be looked into—I am not sure that he did not say, "For the good of the commonwealth!"—the General finished reading the poor little journal, all blotted as it was with ink and tears. As he read, his emotions ranged from pity to anger; from anger back to pity again. He pitied the suffering of the child; he was angry at the deceit that had been practised upon him.
"Sarah!" he called, when he had read the last entry made that morning in his own library, and possibly interrupted by the arrival of the doctor, for a sentence was left unfinished. "Sarah, come here!"
"What is it?" said Sarah, appearing at the door.
"Come in," said the General.
Sarah entered the room, and seated herself with an ill-concealed air of indifference in the most uncomfortable chair in the room. She never sat in a comfortable chair during an interview with the General; it seemed as if she feared being led into a state of amiable receptivity if her body were at ease; it was her way of delivering herself from temptation to be acquiescent.
"An unexpected complication," the General began. "A most unexpec——"
"What is it?" demanded Sarah, cutting him short.