"They are fighting now in the Wilderness," she answered, her thoughts
rushing to the famished army closed in the death grapple with its enemy.
"Dan got a letter to me and he says it is like fighting in a jungle, the
vines are so thick they can't see the other side. He has to aim by ear
instead of sight."
Mrs. Ambler's fingers moved quickly.
"He has become a very fine man," she said. "Your father always liked
him--and so did I--but at one time we were afraid that he was going to be
too much his father's son--he looked so like him on his wild days,
especially when he had taken wine and his colour went high."
"But he has the Lightfoot eyes. The Major, Champe, even their Great-aunt
Emmeline have those same gray eyes that are always laughing."
"Jane Lightfoot had them, too," added Mrs. Ambler. "She used to say that to
love hard went with them. 'The Lightfoot eyes are never disillusioned,' she
once told me. I wonder if she remembered that afterwards, poor girl."
Betty was silent for a moment.
"It sounds cruel," she confessed, "but you know, I have sometimes thought
that it may have been just a little bit her fault, mamma."
Mrs. Ambler smiled. "Your grandpa used to say 'get a woman to judge a woman
and there comes a hanging.'"
"Oh, I don't mean that," responded Betty, blushing. "Jack Montjoy was a
scoundrel, I suppose--but I think that even if Dan had been a scoundrel,
instead of so big and noble--I could have made his life so much better just
because I loved him; if love is only large enough it seems to me that all
such things as being good and bad are swallowed up.
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