Suwanee’s vigil that night was bitter and terrible, indeed.  Her proud, passionate nature writhed under the truth that she had given her heart, unsought, to a Northern officer,—­to one who had from the first made it clear that his love had been bestowed on another.  She felt that she could not blame him.  His frankness had been almost equal to that of her own brothers, and he had satisfied her that they could scarcely be more loyal to her than he would be.  She could detect no flaw in his bearing towards her.  He had not disguised his admiration, his abundant enjoyment of her society, but all expression of his regard had been tinged with respect and gratitude rather than gallantry.  He perhaps had thought that her knowledge of his attitude towards Miss Vosburgh was an ample safeguard, if any were needed.  Alas! it had been the chief cause of her fatal blindness.  She had not dreamed of danger for him or herself in their companionship.  Nothing was clearer than that he expected and wished no such result.  It was well for Lane that this was true, for she would have been a dangerous girl to trifle with.

But she recognized the truth.  Before, love had been to her a thing of poetry, romance, and dreams.  Now it was a terrible reality.  Her heart craved with intense longing what she felt it could never possess.

At last, wearied and exhausted by her deep emotion, she sighed:  “Perhaps it is better as it is.  Even if he had been a lover, the bloody chasm of war would have separated us, but it seems cruel that God should permit such an overwhelming misfortune to come upon an unsuspecting, inexperienced girl.  Why was I so made that I could, unconsciously, give my very soul to this stranger? yet he is not a stranger.  Events have made me better acquainted with him than with any other man.  I know that he has kept no secrets from me.  There was nothing to conceal.  All has been simple, straightforward, and honorable.  It is to the man himself, in his crystal integrity, that my heart has bowed, and then—­that was his chief power—­he made me feel that I was not unworthy.  He taught me to respect my own nature, and to aspire to all that was good and true.

“After all, perhaps I am condemning myself too harshly,—­perhaps the truth that my heart acknowledged such a man as master is proof that his estimate of me is not wholly wrong.  Were there not some kinship of spirit between us, this could not be; but the secret must remain between me and God.”

Lane, tormented by the fear suggested by Suwanee’s manner on the previous evening, dreaded to meet her again, but at first he was reassured.  Never had she been more brilliant and frolicsome than at the breakfast-table that morning.  Never had poor McAllister been more at his wits’ end to know how to reply to her bewildering sallies of good-natured badinage.  Every vulnerable point of Northern character received her delicate satire.  Lane himself did not escape her light shafts.  He made no defence, but smiled or laughed at every palpable hit.  The girl’s pallor troubled him, and something in her eyes that suggested suffering.  There came a time when he could scarcely think of that day without tears, believing that no soldier on either side ever displayed more heroism than did the wounded girl.