The captain colored red.  “I am at a loss to answer you, colonel,” he said, after brief reflection.  “You know far more than you did half an hour ago, and what I knew I could not bear to tell you as yet.”

“My God! my God!  Tell me all, and tell me at once.  Here, man, if you need stimulant to your indignation and cannot speak without it, read this.  I found it, open, among the rose-bushes in the garden, where she must have dropped it when out there with you.  Read it.  Tell me what it means; for, God knows, I can’t believe such a thing of her.”

He handed Chester a sheet of note-paper.  It was moist and blurred on the first page, but the inner pages, though damp, were in good condition.  The first, second, and third pages were closely covered in a bold, nervous hand that Chester knew well.  It was Jerrold’s writing, beyond a doubt, and Chester’s face grew hot as he read, and his heart turned cold as stone when he finished the last hurried line.

“MY DARLING,—­

“I must see you, if only for a moment, before you leave.  Do not let this alarm you, for the more I think the more I am convinced it is only a bluff, but Captain Chester discovered my absence early this morning when spying around as usual, and now he claims to have knowledge of our secret.  Even if he was on the terrace when I got back, it was too dark for him to recognize me, and it seems impossible that he can have got any real clue.  He suspects, perhaps, and thinks to force me to confession; but I would guard your name with my life.  Be wary.  Act as though there were nothing on earth between us, and if we cannot meet until then I will be at the depot with the others to see you off, and will then have a letter ready with full particulars and instructions.  It will be in the first thing I hand to you.  Hide it until you can safely read it.  Your mother must not be allowed a glimmer of suspicion, and then you are safe.  As for me, even Chester cannot make the colonel turn against me now.  My jealous one, my fiery sweetheart, do you not realize now that I was wise in showing her so much attention?  A thousand kisses.  Come what may, they cannot rob us of the past.  HOWARD.

“I fear you heard and were alarmed by the shots just after I left you.  All was quiet when I got home.”

It was some seconds before Chester could control himself sufficiently to speak.  “I wish to God the bullet had gone through his heart!” he said.

“It has gone through mine,—­through mine!  This will kill her mother.  Chester,” cried the colonel, springing suddenly to his feet, “she must not know it.  She must not dream of it.  I tell you it would stretch her in the dust, dead, for she loves that child with all her strength, with all her being, I believe, for it is two mother-loves in one.  She had a son, older than Alice by several years, her first-born,—­her glory, he was,—­but the boy inherited the