"True enough. Good night, Minn!"
"Good night. You are going to sleep early, Miss?"
"So as to have bright eyes in the morning, dear."
Lonely, without her mistress, Minnie also prepared for sleep; and that night Bernard's letter was placed beneath her pillow, and her dreams were of him.
Della, as she had hoped, dreamed of General Delville. All night long was his noble face before her, wearing that radiant expression which had illuminated it when he bade God bless her. Never afterwards, in all her waking hours, whether in joy or gloom, light or darkness, did Della cease to remember him as she dreamed of him there with the halo of that blessing circling him and her.
Lightly as he had seemed to give her up, it had cost the General a more severe struggle than Della had imagined. He had truly loved her, old as he was, and had not loved lightly; but he could not take to his heart the heartless wife which she had frankly admitted she must be if he married her; and Della had, unwittingly, skillfully touched a tender chord, when she made the appeal to his feelings
which she did. He had felt the force of her reasoning, and had been delighted with her frankness and her confidence; though it pained him to relinquish her, he was too much a soldier to display his wounds; and, though he parted from her nominally a friend, he was never more her lover than when he that afternoon called her his child and bade her adieu.