“How do you know?” said Anne, incredulously.

“Do you remember that September, a year ago, when we were all out at Glencoe, and Judge Whipple was ill, and Virginia sent us all away and nursed him herself?”

“Yes,” said Anne.

“And did you know that Mr. Brice had gone out, with letters, when the Judge was better?”

“Yes,” said Anne, breathless.

“It was a Saturday afternoon that he left, although they had begged him to stay over Sunday.  Virginia had written for me to come back, and I arrived in the evening.  I asked Easter where Jinny was, and I found her —­”

“You found her—?” said Anne.

Sitting alone in the summer-house over the river.  Easter said she had been there for two hours.  And I have never known Jinny to be such miserable company as she was that night.”

“Did she mention Stephen?” asked Anne.

“No.”

“But you did,” said Anne, with conviction.

Miss Russell’s reply was not as direct as usual.

“You know Virginia never confides unless she wants to,” she said.

Anne considered.

“Virginia has scarcely seen him since then,” she said.  “You know that I was her room-mate at Monticello last year, and I think I should have discovered it.”

“Did she speak of him?” demanded Miss Russell.

“Only when the subject was mentioned.  I heard her repeat once what Judge Whipple told her father of him; that he had a fine legal mind.  He was often in my letters from home, because they have taken Pa’s house next door, and because Pa likes them.  I used to read those letters to Jinny,” said Anne, “but she never expressed any desire to hear them.”

“I, too, used to write Jinny about him,” confessed Puss.

“Did she answer your letter?”

“No,” replied Miss Puss,—­“but that was just before the holidays, you remember.  And then the Colonel hurried her off to see her Pennsylvania relatives, and I believe they went to Annapolis, too, where the Carvels come from.”

Stephen, sitting in the next house, writing out his account, little dreamed that he was the subject of a conference in the third story front of the Brinsmades’.  Later, when the young ladies were asleep, he carried his manuscript to the Democrat office, and delivered it into the hands of his friend, the night editor, who was awaiting it.

Toward the end of that week, Miss Virginia Carvel was sitting with her back to one of the great trees at Monticello reading a letter.  Every once in a while she tucked it under her cloak and glanced hastily around.  It was from Miss Anne Brinsmade.