Poor, simple little Rose! And yet we say again Rose was not a _fool_, nor yet an unnatural character. There are many, many like her, some who will recognize themselves in this story and more who will not. Gay, impulsive, pleasure-seeking creatures, whom fashionable education and too indulgent parents have done their utmost to spoil, but who still possess many traits of excellence, needing only adverse circumstances to mould and hammer them into the genuine coin of true-hearted womanhood. Such an one was Rose. Reared by a fond mother, petted by an older brother, and teased by a younger, flattered by friend and foe, and latterly caressed and worshiped by a husband, Rose had come to think far too much of her own importance as Mrs. Rose Mather,—_née_ Miss Rose Carleton, of Boston, an acknowledged belle, and leader of the _ton_. There was a wide difference between Rose and Annie Graham, for while the latter, in her sweet unselfishness, thought only of her husband’s welfare, both here and hereafter, Rose’s first impulse was a dread shrinking from being alone, and her second a terror lest the years of her youth, now spread out so invitingly before her, should be passed in secluded widowhood, with nothing from the gay world without wherewith to feed her vanity and love for admiration. Still, beneath Rose’s light exterior there was hidden a mine of tenderness and love, a heart which, when roused to action, was capable of greater, more heroic deeds, than would at first seem possible. And that heart was rousing, too,—was gradually waking into life; but not all at once, and the tears which Rose shed the whole night through were wrung out more from selfishness, perhaps, than from any higher feeling. It would be so stupid living there alone in Rockland. If she could only go to Washington with Will it would not be half so bad, but she could not, for she waked Will up from a sound sleep to ask him if she might, and he had answered “_No_,” falling away again to sleep, and leaving Rose to wakefulness and tears, unmingled with any prayer that the cloud gathering so fast around her might sometime break in blessings on her head. It was scarcely light next morning when Rose, determining to prevail, redoubled her entreaties for her husband to abandon the decision be now candidly acknowledged, but she could not. He was going to the war, and going as a private. Rose almost fainted when he told her this, and for a time refused to be comforted. She might learn to bear it, she said, if he were an officer, but to go as a common soldier, like those she worked for at the Hall, was more than she could bear.