The guest immediately grasped the water bottle, poured himself a glass and drank it off slowly, with majestic mien, to calm himself. “She is beautiful!” he exclaimed, and shutting his teeth together: “Why in the name of heaven did I run upon her”--this to himself. “My wife and I have always been very fond of her--she is our governess.” “Your governess!” Frost’s smile of superiority lighted his face as he added: “I had thought I would like to know more of her, but----” “She seldom meets strangers,” said the Major quietly, and looking steadily at him. “She has had some little experience in the outer world. She is more contented here with us.” “How long has she been with you?” “Six months and more.” Frost’s voice was unsteady as he asked, “Hasn’t hers been a life of romance? She looks like a woman with a history.” “You are a regular old gypsy at fortune telling. She has had a varied life, poor child.” “And the scar I noticed upon the back of her right hand. How did that happen?” “I will tell you,” answered the Major, suggesting--“Maybe you’d like a smoke; suppose we go on the veranda?” The guest assented, and taking his hat from a table, followed the other. Scent of the lilacs fanned through the ivy, and the sodden trees dropped rain on the drenched grass. “I think,” said the Major, as they turned at the end of the veranda to retrace it again: “as you seem greatly interested in my pretty governess, I will give you the history of what you call a scar--that is a fern-leaf--a birth-mark.” Frost puffed away in a negligent manner of easy interest, and said: “I should like to hear it.” “It takes me back to distant, cruel days of war--her father, Darwin Bell, was my friend; we were comrades; he had been brought up on a big plantation, just this side of the mountainous region--it is sixty miles from here--to the northwest. That mountain and the valley on which he lived were favorite haunts of mine in those memorable early days of my life. I was three years Darwin’s junior, and never had I realized his being ahead of me until, at twenty-one, he brought home a wife. Soon the war broke out; he was no coward, not half-hearted, and when the summons came he was ready to go. I was to enlist at the same time. We, like hundreds of others, had only time to make hasty and almost wordless farewells. He had to leave this young wife in the care of servants, Aunt Judy, and I believe her husband’s name was Lige, and she had a son. They were to guard his love-nest while he went out to fight for the Southern cause. “Aunt Judy made many promises; I remember how good were her words of comfort. He respected her as sacredly as the leaves of his dead mother’s Bible, and the safety of his saber. Her brown, leathery face was showered with tears as the young husband and wife, hand in hand, went to the gate; she drew back and sat down on the door-steps, not daring to intrude on those last few moments.