He was almost childish in his happiness, and more like an expectant boy than a man, and I am glad to remember that for a brief space of time he was as perfectly happy as it is often given us to be; glad, too, that in that supreme moment, when all his mighty love was showing in his face and voice, I had no pang of regret or pain because it was another and not myself to whom his love was given. Was there, I wonder, no influence emanating from that room strong enough to reach the girl of whom we both were thinking so intently, and tell her that this was her hour,—the last in which she would ever be loved by a man as good and true as Jack Fullerton?
For a moment we stood looking at the picture, and then Jack, who had spied a bit of dust on a table, took his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe it off. In doing so his hand came in contact with a letter for me which he had found in the office and forgotten until this moment.
“I don’t know why I was so stupid. If it had been from Fanny I should have remembered it, but it is from New York,” he said, as he handed me the rather bulky letter, which was postmarked New York and directed in a handwriting I did not at first recognize.
“Who is writing me from New York?” I said, examining the writing minutely, with a feeling that I had seen it before. Suddenly it came to me, and I exclaimed “Col. Errington. He was to sail Saturday and this is mailed Saturday. What can he have written to me, and so much, too?”
Just then word came up that the new range had arrived, and Mr. Fullerton was wanted to superintend the placing it.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll be there directly;” then to me, “you will excuse me a moment.”
Then he was gone, and I sat looking at the letter and hesitating to break the seal.
Chapter IX.—Annie’s Story Continued.
THE LETTER.
There certainly are times in one’s life when there comes a presentiment of impending evil, and such a time was that when something told me that the reading of the letter in my lap would not leave me just as it found me. But there was no thought of Fanny in my mind until I opened it, and saw that it contained a note directed to Jack in her handwriting, a little unsteady and crooked, but unmistakably hers. There was a trembling in my hands, a weakness in my wrists and back, and I felt my eyes growing hot and dim, as, putting the note on the table, I resolutely turned to the beginning of the letter and read:
“Washington, November 21st, 18—. Thursday