We are not permitted, alas, to go behind these stern walls and discover how Captain Colfax passed that eventful Sunday of the Exodus.  We know that, in his loneliness, he hoped for a visit from his cousin, and took to pacing his room in the afternoon, when a smarting sense of injustice crept upon him.  Clarence was young.  And how was he to guess, as he looked out in astonishment upon the frightened flock of white boats swimming southward, that his mother and his sweetheart were there?

On Monday, while the Colonel and many prominent citizens were busying themselves about procuring the legal writ which was at once to release Mr. Colfax, and so cleanse the whole body of Camp Jackson’s defenders from any, veiled intentions toward the Government, many well known carriages drew up before the Carvel House in Locust Street to congratulate the widow and the Colonel upon the possession of such a son and nephew.  There were some who slyly congratulated Virginia, whose martyrdom it was to sit up with people all the day long.  For Mrs, Colfax kept her room, and admitted only a few of her bosom friends to cry with her.  When the last of the callers was gone, Virginia was admitted to her aunt’s presence.

“Aunt Lillian, to-morrow morning Pa and I are going to the Arsenal with a basket for Max.  Pa seems to think there is a chance that he may come back with us.  You will go, of course.”

The lady smiled wearily at the proposal, and raised her hands in protest, the lace on the sleeves of her dressing gown falling away from her white arms.

“Go, my dear?” she exclaimed, “when I can’t walk to my bureau after that terrible Sunday.  You are crazy, Jinny.  No,” she added, with conviction, “I never again expect to see him alive.  Comyn says they may release him, does he?  Is he turning Yankee, too?”

The girl went away, not in anger or impatience, but in sadness.  Brought up to reverence her elders, she had ignored the shallowness of her aunt’s character in happier days.  But now Mrs. Colfax’s conduct carried a prophecy with it.  Virginia sat down on the landing to ponder on the years to come,—­on the pain they were likely to bring with them from this source—­Clarence gone to the war; her father gone (for she felt that he would go in the end), Virginia foresaw the lonely days of trial in company with this vain woman whom accident made her cousin’s mother.  Ay, and more, fate had made her the mother of the man she was to marry.  The girl could scarcely bear the thought—­through the hurry and swing of the events of two days she had kept it from her mind.

But now Clarence was to be released.  To-morrow he would be coming home to her joyfully for his reward, and she did not love him.  She was bound to face that again and again.  She had cheated herself again and again with other feelings.  She had set up intense love of country in the shrine where it did not belong, and it had answered—­for a while.  She saw Clarence in a hero’s light—­until a fatal intimate knowledge made her shudder and draw back.  And yet her resolution should not be water.  She would carry it through.