Not so Adrienne. Perfect man of the world as Isabey was, and careful as he might be that he should not betray the compelling interest which Angela possessed for him, he could not disguise it from the other woman. Adrienne was reminded of a Spanish saying she had heard long ago: “I am dying for thee and thou art dying for some one who is dying for another.” Nor did Lyddon suppose for one moment that Adrienne was the magnet which drew Isabey. Nevertheless, with a perfectly clear conscience, he reiterated to Angela that he supposed a marriage would shortly take place between Captain Isabey and Madame Le Noir. And to Lyddon’s discomfiture, he saw a look of incredulity come into Angela’s expressive face. It would have been better if she had shown anger or distress, but she did not. Without speaking, she conveyed to Lyddon her inward conviction that Adrienne was nothing and never could be anything to Isabey. Lyddon thought that the best thing possible was for Angela to join Neville at the very earliest opportunity. CHAPTER XIII WARP AND WOOF When Isabey left Harrowby, Angela had again that fearful sense of loss which with the young follows upon the going away of any person who fills a great place in the mind. She remembered having that feeling of desolation when she was barely ten years old and Neville had first gone to West Point. Afterwards, however, although she always parted from him reluctantly and made a loud lament, the feeling had not been so poignant as when she was a child. Now, however, it returned in full force and not for Neville but for Philip Isabey. She began to think as Lyddon did, that the sooner she joined Neville the better. When she had parted from him it had not occurred to her that she should not soon see him again. She knew not what war was, but as time passed on and the first great conflicts began, she realized that every parting with a soldier might mean a last farewell. She might hear any day of Neville’s death and also of Philip Isabey’s. But it was the thought of the latter which made her heart stand still, then beat tempestuously. Her letters to Neville were frequent, and she managed to forward them through Lyddon, who, as a British subject, could communicate with the British Consul at Norfolk and the British Minister at Washington. After much delay, these letters reached Neville. His replies were far more irregular. He was not at the front, but engaged in recruiting duty in the far West--a duty he always disliked and which he felt now to be a practical illustration of how little he was trusted by those among whom he had cast his lot. He accepted it with outward stoicism, but inwardly it humiliated him to the very marrow of his bones. His work led him to the roughest part of the then thinly settled West. It was no place for a woman and least of all for a girl like Angela, who had never been outside of her native county three times in her life.