"Well, my dear husband tells me that he drew up his fine, princely figure, and would have passed him without recognition had not Bruce, with a resolution quite foreign to his easy nature, absolutely button-holed the proud fellow, and told him, all in a breath, about his marriage and his bridal-tour, and invited him to see Aunt Conway and me at our hotel. Of course, in view of Bruce's being married, he forgave him all he at present held against him, and came, nothing loth, to see us, and was so delighted--not more than I, though, I will admit. We kept him all the evening, and heard from his own lips the romantic story of his joining and fighting in the army of France, and of his rescue from death by the young French private. I used to be half afraid of him, but now I think, mother, he is the most fascinating and admirable gentleman I ever met--you know such an odor of romance and adventure clings about him.
"He had a perfect torrent of questions to ask me about Grace. All of them I answered to the best of my ability, but I was not, I confess, prepared for his great agony when I told him she was at Memphis, nursing the fever patients there. Mother, I never saw a human being turn so pallid as he did. He sat quite still for a while, his hand pressed to his brow, and only once I heard a sort of moan from his lips, that sounded like, 'Oh, Grace, you have indeed avenged yourself!' I hastened to assure him that the fever had abated, and the nurses were all returning to their homes, and I expected Grace, as also you and brother Willie, would soon return to Norfolk. And, mother, I felt so sorry for him that I at once blurted out the story of the little boy, Earle Willoughby. Oh, such happy, incredulous excitement I never saw in any one before. Bruce had to tell it all over to him. I was both laughing and crying during my relation of it--'silly child!' as Aunt Conway says. Well, he and Bruce entered at once upon an investigation that has resulted in restoring hope and happiness to two that I love, and in making warm friends and allies of those two men who once stood up on Norfolk's outskirts to try to murder each other, with fiery hatred in their hearts.
"But time has changed all that. My Bruce is a better man to-day than he was then, and General Winans is reasonable, less fiery, less causelessly jealous. Painful experience has taught both of them wisdom.
