“Where have you been, Ray?” said Vivia, approaching, with her glowing cheeks, her sparkling eyes.  “And what are you doing now?”

“Trying camp-life again,” replied Ray, looking up at her in a fixed admiration.

“I’ve had a letter from Beltran.”

“Oh! where is he?” cried Ray.

“Beltran is in camp.”

“And where?”

“Perhaps on the Rio Grande, perhaps on the Potomac.”

“Do you mean to say,” cried Ray, springing up, while string and all fell into the coals, “that Beltran, my brother”—­

“Is a Rebel.”

“Then I am a rebel, too,” said Ray, chokingly, sitting down again, and mechanically stooping to pick up the burning string,—­“a rebel to him!”

“You won’t be a rebel to him, if you’ll listen to reason,—­his reason.”

“He’s got no reason.  It’s only because he was there.”

“Now, Raymond Lamar! if you talk so, you sha’n’t read the letter!”

“I don’t want to read it.”

“Have you left off loving Beltran, because he differs from you?”

“Left off loving Beltran!”

Vivia waited a moment, leaning on the back of his chair, and then Ray, bending, covered his face with his hands, and the large tears oozed from between his brown fingers.

Little Jane, whipping the frothy snow of her eggs, went on whipping all the harder for fear Ray should know she saw him.  And Vivia, with one hand upon his head, took away the brown fingers, that her own cool, fragrant palm might press upon his burning lids.  Such sudden tears belong to such tropical natures.  For there was no anger or sullenness in Ray’s grief; he was just and simply sorry.

“He must have forgotten me,” said Ray, after a sober while.

“There was this note for you in mine, and a draft on New York, because he thought you might be in arrears.”

“No, I’m not.  Aunty can have the draft, though; she may need it before I come back,” said Ray, brokenly, gazing into the fire.  “Do you suppose Beltran wrote mine or yours first?”

“Yours.”

“Then you’ve the last thing he ever set his hand to, perhaps!”

“Don’t talk so, child!” said Vivia, with an angry shiver.  “Come back!  Where are you going?”

“I enlisted, yesterday, in the Kansas Cavalry.”

“Great heavens, Ray! was there not another regiment in all the world than one to be sent down to New Mexico to meet Beltran and the Texan Rangers?” cried Vivia, wringing her hands.

Ray was on his feet again, a swarm of expletives buzzing inarticulately at his lips.

“I never thought of that,” said he, whiter than ashes.

“What made you? oh, what made you?”

“There was no other company.  I liked this captain.  He gave me to-day’s furlough.  I’m going to-night; little Jane’s promised to fix my traps; she’s making me these cookies now, you see.  Pshaw!  Beltran’s up on the Potomac, or else you couldn’t have gotten this letter,—­don’t you know?  You made my heart jump into my mouth!”