"Natalia," she exclaimed, impressively, "guess what has happened!" As the expressman, with fate-like footsteps, tramped up-stairs, carrying the trunk on his shoulder, Barrington, who came after him, noticed that the rumbling and twittering of the piano had ceased, and that his landlady had disappeared. The two women were, in fact, conversing in agitated whispers on the other side of the closed parlor door. "Well, never did I think to lose _him_!" exclaimed Mrs. Douce. "Poor aunt!" said Natalia; "and so late in the season, too." "It isn't that so much," interrupted the other, severely; "but it hurts me that he should have been so sudden and so secret." "Perhaps he thought we--" Natalia paused, and blushed. "But why _should_ he think we'd urge him to stay?" "Hark! is he coming down again?" said her aunt. No; it was merely the expressman. He thumped his way down to the street door. They heard the wagon drive off, and for a moment afterward they held their breath, as if a battle had been raging near them, and the heavy current of the fight had now swept by, leaving them in suspense, lest it should return. Then the dignified step of Barrington resounded on the staircase. He came to the door, and opened it. "I ought," he began, stepping in with a smile, "to explain matters a little." Mrs. Douce's mood was like that of elderly matrons at the wedding of a young friend. She hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. "Oh," she returned, in the breathless, short-of-supplies manner usual with her in awkward situations, "oh--no--explanation is needed, Mr. Barrington!" and, after a short pause, simpering, "I'm sure." Natalia, meanwhile, stood in a shrinking, drooping attitude near the battered rosewood piece of furniture from which she had been drawing music, and looked a good deal like one of those young ladies in old colored prints who devote themselves to standing mournfully under weeping willows, among headstones. "Well, you see," proceeded Barrington, who took Mrs. Douce's denial at its worth, "I didn't say anything, because--well, it wasn't quite settled." "Then you're not _sure_ of going to the war?" Natalia burst forth, with pathetic eagerness. (Barrington noticed that her heightened color was becoming to her.) "Sure?" answered he, cruelly; "oh, yes; humanly speaking, I suppose it's sure enough. I--good gracious!--I only--" These incoherent phrases were drawn out by the effect his statement had produced. Natalia's eyelids fell at his words. She was trying to repress a tendency to sob. By the time the hero had discovered this a tear had found its way into sight beneath her eyelashes. "There!" cried Mrs. Douce, sternly. "Any one might have known it. _We_ aren't made of sole-leather, Mr. Barrington. [He said to himself it was lucky she had told him this.] Common humanity and friendship ought to have shown you what this suddenness would lead to."