“I wish nothing in the case. I have said all that I shall say. If I have spoken severely, it has been because I have little patience with your diseased imaginings. I don’t think I like you very well just now.”
LATE that day, came a letter and a parcel from Evelyn to Dorothy. In the letter the girl wrote:—
I am going to stay here at Branton for two or three more days. That is because I do not want to be with you while you are reading the book I have written for you. Two or three days will be enough for the reading. Then I am going back to Wyanoke. I have been over to the hospital camp every morning, so I don’t need to tell you that I am perfectly well.
I am sending the book by the boy who is to carry this. Please read it within two days, so that I may go home to Wyanoke. You know how much I love you, so I needn’t put anything about that in this letter. But Edmonia sends her love, and so does Mrs. Pegram. What a dear she is! She wants me to call her ‘Agatha,’ and I’m beginning to do so. But I would like it better if she would let me say ‘Cousin Agatha’ instead. Somehow that seems more like what I feel.
I reckon Colonel Kilgariff will be going back to Petersburg about now. If he hasn’t gone yet, please give him my regards and good wishes. I hope he won’t get himself wounded again.
Dorothy faithfully delivered Evelyn’s peculiarly reserved message to Kilgariff, whereupon the young gentleman declared his purpose of returning to Petersburg on the third day following, that being the earliest return that Arthur, as his surgeon, would permit.
“But I shall call at Branton to see Evelyn first,” he added. This brought a queer look into Dorothy’s eyes, but whether it was a look of pleasure, or of regret, or of simple surprise, he could not make out. “After all,” he thought, “it doesn’t matter. I have decided to take this affair into my own hands. And they shall be strong hands too—not weak and irresolute, as they have been hitherto.”
Before opening the manuscript, Dorothy sent off a young negro to Branton, with a little note to Evelyn, in which she wrote:—
I shall not read a line of what you have written until I have told you how much gratified I am that you have wanted in this way to tell me about yourself. It means much to me that you wish to tell me those things, whatever they may be, that concern you. Another thing I want to say to you before reading your manuscript, and that is that no matter what it may reveal, I shall love and cherish you just the same. You remember what I said to you once—that I _know you_, and that no fact or circumstance of the past can in the least alter my feelings toward you. Be very sure of that. Now I am going to read your manuscript.