"I shall see you again, perhaps to-morrow," he says; "meantime there is a good deal for us to do," and before the nurse has reached the sick man's door, she is politely accosted by the same urbane young man, and is by no means sorry to stop and talk with somebody about her sad-faced old patient and his wonderfully pretty daughter. It was Abbot's purpose to devote a little time that afternoon to answering the letter received but yesterday from Miss Winthrop. It needs no telling--the fact that there had never been a love-affair in their engagement; and no one can greatly blame a woman who is dissatisfied with a loveless match. Viva Winthrop was not so unattractive as to be destitute of all possibility of winning adorers. Indeed, there was strong ground for believing that she fully realized the bliss of having at least one man's entire devotion. Whatsoever evil traits may have cropped out in Mr. Hollins's army career, _she_ had seen nothing of them, and knew only his thoughtful and lover-like attentions while they were abroad, and his assiduous wooing on his return. Paul Abbot had never asked for her love--indeed, he had hardly mentioned the word as incidental to their engagement. Nevertheless, yielding to what she had long been taught to consider her fate, she had accepted the family arrangement--and him--and was the subject of incessant and enthusiastic congratulation. Abbot's gallant service and distinguished character as an officer had won the hearty admiration of all the circle in which she lived and moved and had her being, and she was thought an enviable girl to have won the love of so brave and so promising a man. A little more reserved and cold than ever had Miss Winthrop become, and the smile with which she thanked these many well-wishers was something wintry and weary in the last degree. If he had only loved her, there might have bloomed in her heart an answering passion that would have filled her nature, and made her proudly happy in her choice. But that he had never had for her anything more than a brother-and-sister, boy-and-girl sort of affection--a kind, careless, yet courteous tenderness--was something she had to tell herself time and again, and to hear as well from the letters of a man whose letters she should have forbidden.