"I met Miss Grayson, your niece, during my first class summer at West Point, and got to admire her, as everybody else did. I got to more than admire her. She absolutely fascinated me. I don't mean that she tried to in the least,--she just couldn't help it. Before camp was half over I was just beside myself about her; couldn't be content if I didn't see her every day; take her to the hops, and devote myself generally. Every man in the class thought I was dead in love with her. Mr. Brandon, I--I did myself. I never ceased to think so--until last--until after that Ku-Klux fight at Sandbrook. I _made_ her think so. She really tried to talk me out of it at first,--she did indeed. She said that it was simply a fancy that I would soon outgrow; and she never for once could be induced to say that she cared anything for me. She was always lovely and ladylike, always perfect, it seemed to me. She even went so far as to remind me that she was as old as I was, and far older in the ways of the world, and cadets especially. She never encouraged me one bit, and I just went on getting more and more in love with her all that year; used to write to her three or four times a week; dozens of letters that she only occasionally answered. Then she came up in June, and I was incessantly at her side. She might not care for me, but she did not seem to care for anybody else, and so it went on. She would not take my class ring when I begged her to that summer. She wore it a few days, but made me take it back the day we graduates went away; but I went back that summer to see her twice, and when I came away I swore that after I'd been in service a year I would return to New York to offer myself again; and we used to write to each other that winter, only her letters were not like mine. They were nice and friendly and all that,--still, I knew she had my promise. I thought she would expect me to come back. I felt engaged so far as I was concerned; then when I got wounded her letters grew far more interested, you know (Mr. Brandon nodded appreciatively); and then they began to come often; and, whether it was that she thought our life was very hazardous, or that the climate was going to be a bad thing for me, or that I would not recover rapidly there, her letters began to urge me to come North. I got two at Sandbrook--one the very day you were there at the tent--and two since we came here; and then--then I found only too surely that it was not love I felt for her; indeed, that I had grown to love--you know well enough (almost defiantly)--Miss Carrington. I felt in honor bound to carry out my promise to Miss Grayson, and to avoid--to--well, to be true to my promise in every way. But I was utterly miserable. Mother detected it in my letters, and at last I broke down and told her the truth. She said there was only one honorable course for me to pursue, and that was to write to Miss Grayson and tell her the same, tell her the whole truth; and it was an