nearly the whole day beside him; Mary Leighton and Henrietta very often
of the party, and Sophie occasionally looking in upon us. Sometimes when
Charlotte Benson, as ranking officer, decreed that the patient needed
rest, we took our books and work and went to the piazza, outside the
window of his room.
He would have been very tired of us, if he had not been very much in
love with one of us. As it was, it must have been a kind of fool's
paradise in which he lived, five pretty women fluttering about him,
offering the prettiest homage, and one of them the woman for whom,
wisely or foolishly, rightly or wrongly, he had conceived so violent
a passion.
As soon as he was out of pain and began to recover the tone of his
nerves at all, I saw that he wanted me beside him more than ever, and
that Charlotte Benson, with all her skill and cleverness, was as nothing
to him in comparison. No doubt he dissembled this with care; and was
very graceful and very grateful and infinitely interesting. His moods
were very varying, however; sometimes he seemed struggling with the most
unconquerable depression, then we were all so sorry for him; sometimes
he was excited and brilliant; then we were all thrilled with admiration.
And not unfrequently he was irritable and quite morose and sullen. And
then we pitied, and admired, and feared him _a la fois_. I am sure no
man more fitted to command the love and admiration of women ever lived.
Charlotte Benson with great self-devotion had insisted upon teaching the
children for two hours every day, so that Mr. Langenau might not be
annoyed at the thought that they were losing time, and that Sophie might
not be inconvenienced. It was the least that she could do, she reasoned,
after the many lessons that Mr. Langenau had given us, with so much
kindness, and without accepting a return. Henrietta volunteered for the
service, also, and from eleven to one every day the boys were caught and
caged, and made to drink at the fountain of learning; or rather to
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