Jacqueline withdrew her eyes from the fading gold, and, turning in her chair, faced her uncle with a faint smile.  She loved him dearly, and he loved her, and they had not many secrets from each other.  Now she looked at him with a wavering light upon her face, shook her head as if in answer to some dim question of her own, and broke into silent weeping.

“Bless my soul!” cried Uncle Edward, and started up in alarm.  He had a contemptuous horror of women’s tears; but Jacqueline was different, Jacqueline was not like other women.  He could not remember having seen Jacqueline cry since she was a child, and the sight troubled him immensely.  She wept as though she were used to weeping.  He crossed to the chair by the window and touched her bowed head with his wrinkled hand.  “What is it, child?” he asked.  “Tell Uncle Edward.”

But Jacqueline, it appeared, had nothing to tell.  After a little she wiped her eyes, and brokenly laughed at herself; and then, a sound coming through the window, she started to her feet.  “That is Dr. Gilmer!  I hear his horse at the gate.  Joab must have met him upon the road!”

“Joab?”

“Mr. Rand’s servant.”

“You appear,” said the Major, “to know a deal more than I do about Mr. Rand.  Where did you learn so much?”

Jacqueline, halfway to the door, turned upon him her candid eyes.  “Don’t you remember?” she answered, “the month that I spent, summer before last, at Cousin Jane Selden’s, on the Three-Notched Road?  I saw Mr. Rand very often that summer.  Cousin Jane liked him, and he was welcome at her house.  And when I used to stay there as a child I saw him then, and—­and was sorry for him.  Don’t you remember?  I told you at the time.”

“No, I don’t remember,” replied Uncle Edward grimly.  “I have other things to think of than the Rands.  There should have been no association—­though I am surprised at nothing which goes on beneath Jane Selden’s roof.  Jane Selden has a most erratic mind.—­Don’t sympathize too much, Jacqueline, with that damned young Republican upstairs!  He’s an enemy.”  The Major walked to the window.  “It is Gilmer, sure enough, and—­ah, it is Ludwell Cary with him, riding Prince Rupert.  Come look, Jacqueline!”

Receiving no answer, he turned to find that his niece had vanished and he was alone in the library.  Presently he heard from the hail, through the half-open door, the doctor’s voice and Ludwell Cary’s expressions of concern, Jacqueline’s low replies, a confusion of other voices, and finally, from the head of the stairs, Colonel Dick’s hearty “Come up, Gilmer, come up!  D’ye remember that damned place in the hill road where my mare Nelly threw me, coming home at dawn from Maria Erskine’s wedding?”