It was Virginia who broke the silence.

“Stephen, do you remember that fearful afternoon of the panic, when you came over from Anne Brinsmade’s to reassure me?”

“Yes, dear,” he said.  “But what made you think of it now?”

She did not answer him directly.

“I believed what you said, Stephen.  But you were so strong, so calm, so sure of yourself.  I think that made me angry when I thought how ridiculous I must have been.”

He pressed her hand.

“You were not ridiculous, Jinny.”  She laughed.

“I was not as ridiculous as Mr. Cluyme with his bronze clock.  But do you know what I had under my arm—­what I was saving of all the things I owned?”

“No,” he answered; “but I have often wondered.”  She blushed.

“This house—­this place made me think of it.  It was Dorothy Manners’s gown, and her necklace.  I could not leave them.  They were all the remembrance I had of that night at Mr. Brinsmade’s gate, when we came so near to each other.”

“Virginia,” he said, “some force that we cannot understand has brought us together, some force that we could not hinder.  It is foolish for me to say so, but on that day of the slave auction, when I first saw you, I had a premonition about you that I have never admitted until now, even to myself.”

She started.

“Why, Stephen,” she cried, “I felt the same way!”

“And then,” he continued quickly, “it was strange that I should have gone to Judge Whipple, who was an intimate of your father’s—­such a singular intimate.  And then came your party, and Glencoe, and that curious incident at the Fair.”

“When I was talking to the Prince, and looked up and saw you among all those people.”

He laughed.

“That was the most uncomfortable of all, for me.”

“Stephen,” she said, stirring the leaves at her feet, “you might have taken me in your arms the night Judge Whipple died—­if you had wanted to.  But you were strong enough to resist.  I love you all the more for that.”

Again she said:—­ “It was through your mother, dearest, that we were most strongly drawn together.  I worshipped her from the day I saw her in the hospital.  I believe that was the beginning of my charity toward the North.”

“My mother would have chosen you above all women, Virginia,” he answered.

In the morning came to them the news of Abraham Lincoln’s death.  And the same thought was in both their hearts, who had known him as it was given to few to know him.  How he had lived in sorrow; how he had died a martyr on the very day of Christ’s death upon the cross.  And they believed that Abraham Lincoln gave his life for his country even as Christ gave his for the world.

And so must we believe that God has reserved for this Nation a destiny high upon the earth.

Many years afterward Stephen Brice read again to his wife those sublime closing words of the second inaugural:—­