"I remember. I did not understand in the least, papa."
"It seems she spent all the last winter in Washington, where the society was unusually good, it is said, as well as unusually military. I do not know how that can be true, when all Southerners were of course out of the city - but that's no matter. A girl like this St. Clair girl of course knew all the epaulettes there were."
"Yes, papa - she is always very much admired. She must be that everywhere."
"I suppose so, though I don't like her," said papa. "Well, Daisy, - I do not know how to tell you. She knew your friend."
I was silent, wondering what all this was coming to.
"Do you understand me, Daisy? - She has won him from you."
A feeling of sickness passed over me; it did not last. One vision of my beautiful enemy, one image of her as Mr. Thorold's friend, - it made me sick for that instant; then, I believe I looked up and smiled.
"By a friend of Miss St. Clair, who was with her in Washington and knew the whole progress of the affair, and testifies to their being engaged."
"Miss St. Clair and your friend, - Colonel Somebody. I forget his name, Daisy, though you told me, I believe."
"He was not a colonel, papa; not at all; not near it."
"No. He has been promoted, I understand. Promotions are rapid in the Northern army now-a-days; a lieutenant in the regulars is transformed easily into a colonel of volunteers. They want more officers than they have got, I suppose."
"Your mother. She has it direct from the friend of your rival."
"But, papa, nobody knew about me. It was kept entirely private."
"Not after you came away, I suppose. How else should this story be told as of the gentleman _you were engaged to?_"
I waited a little while, to get my voice steady, and then I went on with my reading to papa. Once he interrupted me to say, "Daisy, how do you take this that I have been telling you?" - and at the close of our reading he asked again in a perplexed manner, "You do not let it trouble you, Daisy?" - and each time I answered him, "I do not believe it, papa." Neither did I; but at the same time a dreadful shadow of possibility came over my spirit. I could not get from under it, and my soul fainted, as those were said to do who lay down for shelter under the upas tree. A poison as of death seemed to distil upon me from that shadow. Not let it trouble me? It was a man's question, I suppose, put with a man's powerlessness to read a woman's mind; even though the man was my father.