I went out for my usual evening walk, longing and half dreading to see Mr. Thorold; for I did not like to show him my fears; they gave him pain; and yet at the same time I wanted him to scold them away. But this time I did not see him. I walked the avenue, at first eagerly, then anxiously; then with an intense pressing pain and suspense which could hardly be borne. Neither Thorold nor Thorold's horse appeared among all the figures moving there; and after walking as long as I dared, I was fain to go home with that pain in my heart. It seemed, as I went up the stairs to my room, almost as if I could die at once with it. Yet I had to make my hair smooth and meet Mrs. Sandford at tea, and hear all her little details about Dr. Sandford's illness; which, as they were precisely the same as those of the day before, had nothing even to hold my attention for a moment. But I attended. It was necessary. And I eat toast and drank tea. That was necessary too; with every mouthful a stab of pain, and every little ordinary incident of the tea-table a wrenching of my heartstrings. One does those things quietly and the world never knows. But I hailed it as a great relief when Mrs. Sandford rose from the table.
"Poor Daisy!" she said. "I must leave you to yourself again - all alone. It's too bad!"
"I like it very well so," I told her.
"It mustn't go on," she said. "Really it must not. You will mope, if you don't already. Don't you, Daisy? Where are all your admirers?"
She had touched my face caressingly with her fingers, and I had to look up and meet her. It was one of the hardest minutes of self-control I ever knew. I met her and answered calmly, even coldly; and she went; and I sat down and shrank, I remember how I shrank, lowering my head and neck and shoulders in a crushing reaction from the erect self-assertion of the moment before. The next thing, two hands were on my shoulders and a voice whispered in my ear a question, "what was the matter?". So as no other voice ever asked me that question; - with the tender assumption of the right to know, and an equally gentle hint that there was comfort and help somewhere not far off. Now, however, I only started up with terror at hearing that voice there; - terror instantly displaced by another terror at the reason of its being there. I knew, I can't tell how I knew, by the first glance into Mr. Thorold's face.
"Yes," said he, in a low voice, "I have got orders."
"Where?" I managed to ask. "To do what?"
"I must take a battery across the country to General
Patterson."
"That will take you out of the way," I said.
"Out of the way of what?" said he, drawing me to his breast, and looking down into my face with his hazel eyes sparkling over a depth of something that was not merry. "Out of the way of what, Daisy?" he repeated. "Out of the way of fighting, do you mean? Is that your way of being a proper soldier's wife? It is out of your way, love; that is what I think of."