At last I began to grow quite weary of attentions which I could not persuade myself were prompted by anything but recollections of the dead, and spoke of Lieutenant Marshall to Virginia, my only confidant, constantly, as "that tiresome man." Perhaps it was owing to her desire to relieve me of one of my heaviest burdens that she so often made one in our _tête-à-têtes_, and by infusing a great deal more spirit and life in our conversation, assisted me greatly. I do not know how it happened, but we both brightened wonderfully when Virginia joined us, and although I might have been half asleep with intense dulness a few moments before, I generally found myself very soon wide awake, and with auditors so attentive and easily pleased that I began to be quite uplifted with elevated ideas of my own newly developed conversational powers. One evening, there was a little gathering of young people in a house where the hostess did not approve of dancing. We were all seated in a stiff circle round the room doing our best to amuse and be amused by rational conversation. The appearance of things was very unpromising, and the lady of the house seemed quite uneasy; at last she proposed a promenade, and anything to break up the monotony was eagerly caught at. The ladies and gentlemen, like prisoners marching for exercise, were soon walking in at one door and out at another with great precision and order. I expected Mr. Marshall to ask me to join the staid procession, but perhaps marching seemed too much like work to him, for he proposed instead a game of backgammon. This had always appeared to me an uninteresting, rattling, flighty sort of a game; but to amuse so sorrow-stricken a man I would even have played checkers. Before we had finished the first game, I felt a hand lightly resting on my shoulder, and looking round, saw Virginia seated close behind me. This was very kind in her, and I felt it to the depths of my heart. She was a great favorite in Louden, and to leave all who would have exerted themselves to please and amuse her, to sit quietly with me in a dull corner looking over a game of backgammon, was an effort of friendship of which I hardly thought that, in similar circumstances, I should have been capable. When the game was ended, I made a movement to close the board, but Mr. Marshall asked me so earnestly for one more, just one more, that I consented. However, I took an opportunity, while he was stooping to pick up some of the men that had dropped, to whisper. "You need not stay here, Virginia. You'll be dreadfully tired, and I don't mind much being left alone; there's Charles Foster looking quite distressed because you won't walk with him." "No, dear," said Virginia, very affectionately, "there is not a person in the room I like half so well to stay with as you."