Page:The woman in battle .djvu/217

Rh been sitting and conversing in a low tone, and the four of us amused ourselves by eating apples and telling fortunes with the seeds. This appeared to afford some amusement to the other three, but I found it rather dull entertainment, and heartily wished that the evening was over. Phil, however, was so wrapped up with his lady, that he was in no hurry to go; but somehow Miss M. did not appear to fancy him by any means as much as he did her, and before a great while they had quite a falling out, and she addressed her conversation chiefly to me, and seemed to have taken quite a liking to me. I was not a little surprised at the warmth of her manner, but supposed that she was merely trying to provoke Phil by a little coquetry, and never imagined for an instant that there was anything serious in it all. When we arose to leave, Miss M. was scarcely polite to Phil, but she looked at me in a very bewildering way; and squeezing my hand a little more than our brief acquaintance warranted, gave me a most pressing invitation to call again.

As we walked up the street, Phil asked me how I was pleased, and then told me all about his falling out with his girl. She, it seems, had insisted, with considerable vehemence, that she did not, could not, and would not, love him, and he was very much disposed to think, from what she said, and from the manner in which she behaved, that some other fellow was cutting him out. He little imagined that his friend, Harry T. Buford, was the innocent and unsuspecting cause of his troubles. I tried to cheer him up as well as I could, and then we parted, he to get his horse for a night ride to camp, and I to go to bed at the hotel. The next day I received two letters, one of which was from my future husband; for, gentle reader, all these months that, in a guise of a man, I had been breaking young ladies' hearts by my fascinating figure and manner, my own woman's heart had an object upon which its affections were bestowed, and I was engaged to be married to a truly noble officer of the Confederate army, who knew me, both as a man and as a woman, but who little suspected that Lieutenant Harry T.