“Well, to end my long history. I remained in Europe until the news from America indicated the approach of war--Nighthawk managing my estate, and remitting me the proceeds at Paris. When I saw that an armed collision was going to take place, I hastened back, reaching Virginia in the winter of 1860. But I did not come to Fonthill. I had a horror of the place. From New York, where I landed, I proceeded to Montgomery, without stopping upon the route; found there a prominent friend of my father who was raising a brigade in the Southwest; was invited by him to aid him; and soon afterward was elected to the command of a company of cavalry by his recommendation. I need only add, that I rose gradually from captain to colonel, which rank I held in 1863, when we first met on the Rappahannock--my regiment having been transferred to a brigade of General Lee’s cavalry. “You saw me then, and remember my bitterness and melancholy. But you had no opportunity to descry the depth and intensity of those sentiments in me. Suddenly the load was lifted. _That woman_ made her appearance, as if from the grave, and you must have witnessed my wonder, as my eyes fell upon her. Then, she was not dead after all! I was not a murderer! And to complete the wonder, _he_ was also alive. A man passing along the bank of the river, as I discovered afterward from Nighthawk, who ferreted out the whole affair--a man named Swartz, a sort of poor farmer and huckster, passing along the Nottoway, on the morning after the storm, had found the woman cast ashore, with the boat overturned near her; and a mile farther, had found Mortimer, not yet dead, in the grave. Succored by Swartz, they had both recovered--had then disappeared. I was to meet them again, and know of their existence only when the chance of war threw us face to face on the field. “You know the scenes which followed. Mortimer, or Darke, as he now calls himself, confronted me everywhere, and _she_ seemed to have no object in life but my destruction. You heard her boast in the house near Buckland that she had thrice attempted to assassinate me by means of her tool, the man Swartz. Again, at Warrenton, in the hospital, she came near poniarding me with her own hand. Nighthawk, who had followed me to the field, and become a secret agent of General Stuart, warned me of all this--and one day, gave me information more startling still. And this brings me, my dear Surry, to the last point in my narrative, I now enter upon matter with which you have been personally ‘mixed up.’