Jacqueline broke the seal and read:—­

JACQUELINE:—­I am kept here for an uncertain time—­worse luck, dear heart!  Do not send what letters may have come for me, as I may leave sooner than I think for, and so would pass them on the road.  Open any from the court in Winchester, where I have a case pending—­if the matter seems pressing, take a copy, and send copy or original to me by to-morrow’s stage.  I am expecting a letter from Washington—­an important one, outlining the Embargo measures.  I looked for it before I left Richmond.  If it has arrived, open it, dear heart, and glance through it to see if there be any message or enquiry which I should have at once.  It is very hot, very dusty, very tiresome in the court room.  I will leave Tom Mocket here to wind things up, and will get home as soon as I can.  Then, as soon as the hurly-burly’s over, we’ll go to Roselands for a little while—­to the calm, the peace, bright days and white nights!  While I write here in the Apollo, you are at church in Saint John’s.  Shall I say, “Pray for me, sweet saint?” You’ll do that without my asking.  So I’ll say instead, “Think of me, dear wife, and love me still.”

     Thine, LEWIS.

Jacqueline stood up in her faintly coloured gown, all rich light and rose bloom.  From her dressing-table she took her keys, and, opening her mother’s desk of rosewood and mother-of-pearl, lifted from it several letters and the packet which Colonel Nicholas had given her the day before.  With these in her hands she left her chamber and went into the drawing-room.  “Bring the candles,” she said over her shoulder to Mammy Chloe.  “It is growing too dark to see to read.”

CHAPTER XXVII

THE LETTER

The windows were open to the dusky rose of the west, and their long curtains stirred in the hot and fitful breeze.  Jacqueline, waiting for the lights, pushed the heavy hair from her forehead and panted a little with the oppression of the night.  Young Isham entered with the candles, and Mammy Chloe brought her upon a salver a cup of coffee and a roll.  She ate and drank, then sent her old nurse away.  The candles, under their tall glass shades, were upon the centre table, and beside them lay the letters she was to read.  Her husband’s own letter was slipped beneath the ribbon that confined her dress, and lay against her heart.

It was so hot and dull a night that she stood for a while at a window, leaning a little out, trying to fancy that there was rain in the fantastic mass of clouds that rose on either side of the evening star.  The smell of the box at the gate was strong.  She thought of Fontenoy, of Major Edward, and of Deb.  A grey moth touched her; she looked once again at the bright star between the clouds, then, turning back into the room, drew a chair to the table and, sitting down, took into her lap the papers that lay beside the candles.