The thought of writing to Broussard startled and overwhelmed Anita.  She glanced about her nervously, fearing Mrs. Lawrence’s words had been overheard, and stammered and blushed.  But the woman, lying wan and weak in the bed, did not notice this.

“I am not strong enough to dictate it exactly as I want,” said Mrs. Lawrence, “and you will have to write it at your own home.  But I am very anxious for you to write to Mr. Broussard for me and tell him that my husband is missing and will soon be posted as a deserter; that I don’t know where he is, but I am sure he will return.  Don’t tell Mr. Broussard how ill I am, but just say that the Colonel has let me stay on here, and the boy is well.  Mr. Broussard is my husband’s best friend; they were playmates in boyhood.”

A dead silence fell between the woman and the girl and lasted for some minutes.  Anita was already composing the letter in her mind.

“Perhaps before I go I can do something else for you,” she said presently.

“No, everything has been done for me, and Mrs. McGillicuddy brings the boy over every night to tell me good-night.  What you can do for me is to write the letter, as I asked you, and post it to-night.  It can’t reach Mr. Broussard in less than a month, perhaps two months.  The last letter I received from him he was in some wild place a long distance from Guam, but he will get the letter eventually, if he lives.”

Anita rose and walked back home through the icy mist.  Mrs. Fortescue was in the shaded drawing-room seated at her harp, playing soft chords and arpeggios, with Colonel Fortescue leaning over her chair.  If was a picture Anita had often seen, and at those times, from her childhood and from Beverley’s, they were made to feel that they were secondary, and even the After-Clap was superfluous.  Nevertheless, Anita walked into the room.  The Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue started apart like young lovers.

“I have been to see Mrs. Lawrence,” said Anita, “and she asked me if I would write a letter for her.  She didn’t, of course, tell me not to say anything about it to you, mother and daddy, but I would rather not tell you to whom the letter is to be written.  You must trust me, my own dear daddy.  It is a very simple letter, just to say that Lawrence has disappeared and Mrs. Lawrence and the little boy are in kind hands.”

“Of course we trust you,” answered Colonel Fortescue, smiling.  “You are a very trusty person, Anita.”

“Like my father and mother,” answered Anita, and ran out of the room.  As they heard her light step tripping up the stairs, the father and mother looked at each other with troubled eyes.

“It is to Broussard,” said the Colonel, remembering his last interview with him.  “I think Broussard steadily befriended Lawrence and his wife.”

Mrs. Fortescue’s candid eyes grew clouded.

“It is a strange intimacy,” she said.

“It’s all right,” unhesitatingly replied the Colonel.