“My first impulse was to do just that very thing. But I seldom permit myself to act upon impulse; and so I reflected that I had no right to betray your secret, or to interfere with your plans, or in any way invade your free agency; and I resolved to let you take your own course and to protect you in it as far as in me lay.” “Oh, Justin, dear Justin! good and true in all things, how much I——” her voice broke down and she wept. “And now, love, forgive me in what I am about to explain to you—because, if I live, I am to be your husband, am I not?” “Oh, yes, yes,” she answered, earnestly. “And if I die, still we are to be one forever?” “Forever and ever!” “Why, then, we are bound together as fast as though all the courts in the country had issued our marriage license, and all the churches in Christendom had consecrated our union.” “We are, my own dear love.” “Then you will let me speak as plainly to you as to my wife.” “Just as plainly. Yes.” “Well, then, the very day on which you were mustered in, when I recognized you, I asked myself with a shudder, Where will she eat? Where will she sleep? With whom will she associate? How will she maintain her sacred womanly reserve in this crowded camp, where four or five soldiers occupy a tent together? And then it was that I felt the strong impulse to give private information of your sex, and have you quietly mustered out; but as I said before, I reflected that I had no right to betray your secret, or restrain your free agency, and I resolved to let you go on your own way, but to protect you in it, and so I immediately selected you as my orderly, and assigned you a nook in my own quarters, where your woman’s holy privacy would be, and ever has been, inviolate.” “Oh, Justin, dear love, honored husband, a thousand blessings on you for all your tender care,” she said, stooping and pressing her lips to his. He put his arms around her, and she wept to feel how feeble those strong arms had become, and he fondly returned her caresses. “Tell me, now, Justin,” she said, “how it happened that you never once betrayed to me your recognition of me?” “I have great powers of reticence and self-control. I knew that to betray my knowledge of you would be to wound your delicacy and control your actions, and so I constantly guarded—” “Hark!” exclaimed Britomarte, springing to her feet. “What is it?” cried Justin. “The Rebels are upon us.—Justin!” “Well, dear?” “If they capture us, do not betray my sex to them, in any hope that they will respect it. Do not, Justin. Do not!” “Not for a thousand worlds. Your uniform is the best protection your womanhood could have now,” said the wounded man. CHAPTER XLI. THE SURPRISE.