She paused, but he did not speak, and with swelling breast and parching throat she went on:--
"At Five Forks my husband was killed in a hand-to-hand fight with a Northern officer. He struck his enemy down after he had received his own death-wound. I pray God he did not know the day was lost. He had gone through so much, I hope that was spared him. On the other side of death he must have found some comfort to help him bear it. God must have had some comfort for our poor boys when he permitted the cause of liberty to be lost."
She pressed her clenched hand against her bosom, and as she did so her eyes met those of her companion. She felt the sympathy of his look, but something recalled her to the sense that she was speaking to one from the North.
"It is not the cause of liberty to you," she said. "I have forgotten again. I have not spoken of all this for so long. I have not dared; but to-day--to-day I must speak, and you must forgive me if I use the old language."
He dropped his glance as if he felt it an intrusion to see her bitter emotion, and said softly: "I think I understand. You need not apologize."
"After the war," she went on hurriedly and abruptly, "I lived for my daughter. I worked for her. She--she was like her father."
She choked, but regained the appearance of composure by a mighty effort.
"When she was a woman--she was still a child to me; over twenty, but I was not twice her age--she went North, and there she fell in love. She wrote me that she was to marry a Northerner, and when she added his name--it was the son of the man who killed her father."
"It is not possible!" the other exclaimed. "You imagined it. Such things happen in melodramas--"
She put up her hand and arrested his words.
"This happened not in a melodrama, but in a tragedy--in my life," she said. "I need not go into details. She married him, and I have never seen her since."
"No. It was my wedding gift to my daughter--that I kept her secret. That was all I had strength to do. You think I was an unnatural mother, of course; but--"
She saw that his eyes were moist as he raised them in answering.
"I should have said so yesterday without any hesitation; to-day--"
"To-day?" she echoed eagerly, as he paused.