“Am I mad or morbid?” she inquired. “All this must be wrong and extravagant. There are thousands and thousands of wives who are parted from their husbands, and girls who are parted from their lovers, by this war. I meet such every day, and they are very cheerful over it. ‘My husband is on General Sherman’s staff,’ says one lady, with more pride than regret. ‘John is with Admiral Dahlgren before Charleston,’ chirps another, whose betrothed is daily exposed to death. Is my love greater than theirs, or is my patience only less?” She paused, and then answered herself— “I know not how it may be with others—I only know that I cannot live or breathe except I go to my lover’s side and share his toils and dangers.” And she arose and put back the dark tresses of her hair, while a wonderful calmness and resolution settled her stormy features into stillness. CHAPTER VI. THE GUERRILLA’S WIFE. Danger, long travel, want and woe, Soon change the form that best we know; For deadly fear can time outgo, And blanch at once the hair; Hard time can roughen form and face, And what can quench the eye’s bright grace, Nor does old age a wrinkle trace More deeply than despair.—SCOTT. Erminie grieved bitterly over the departure of her brother; yet she, no more than Britomarte, would have kept him back even if she could have done so. But she wept and prayed through the whole of the succeeding night. Only the reflection that he was doing his duty to his country, and the belief that her prayers for his safety would be heard in Heaven, at length sufficed to console her. The next morning she had no time to grieve and but little to pray. A busy and exciting day was before her. Early in the forenoon, Lieutenant Ethel, with earnestly grateful acknowledgments of the affectionate hospitality he had enjoyed for so many weeks, took a sorrowful leave of the parsonage. It is true that he need not have hurried away to join his ship at Baltimore that day. But a fine sense of delicacy suggested to him a certain impropriety in his remaining the guest of a house where there were only two young ladies left to entertain him. So he took leave a few hours previous to the departure of Major Fielding. “I feel really sorry that he is gone. He is a gentlemanly young officer,” said Erminie, looking after the hack that was conveying him to the railway station. “Yes, but he was a nuisance for all that! and I am very glad he is out of the way,” said Elfie, who was standing by her side. “Oh, Elfie, how can you say any thing so unkind!” “It isn’t unkind; it is true.” “He never was in _my_ way.”