To this Helen consented--Juno still revolving in her mind how to return the letter, which grew more and more a horror to her. It was in her pocket yet, she knew, for she had felt it there when, after lunch, she went to her room for a fresh handkerchief. She would accompany Helen home, would manage to slip into the library alone, and put it partly under a book, so that it would appear to be hidden, and thus account for it not having been seen before; or better yet, she would catch it up playfully and banter Helen on her carelessness in leaving her love letters so exposed. This last seemed a very clever plan, and with her spirits quite elated, Juno drove around with Helen, finding no one in the parlor below, and felicitating herself upon the fact that Helen left her alone while she ran up to Katy.
"Now is my time," she thought, stealing noiselessly into the library and feeling for the letter.
But it was not there. It was missing, gone, and no amount of search, no shaking of handkerchief, or turning of pocket inside out could avail to find it. The letter was lost, and in the utmost consternation Juno returned to the parlor, still hunting for the letter, and appearing so abstracted as scarcely to be civil when Katy came down to see her; asking if she was going that night to Sybil Grandon's, and talking of the dreadful war, which she hoped would not be a war after all. Juno was too wretched to talk, and after a few moments she started for home, hunting in her own room and through the halls, but failing in her search, and finally giving it up, with the consoling reflection that were it found in the street, as seemed quite probable, no suspicion could fasten on her; and as fear of detection, rather than contrition for the sin, had been the cause of her distress, she grew comparatively calm, save when her conscience made itself heard and admonished confession as the only reparation which was now in her power. But Juno could not confess, and all that day she was absent-minded and silent, while her mother watched her closely, wondering what connection, if any, there was between her burning cheeks and the letter she had found upon the floor in her daughter's room just after she had left it; the letter, at whose contents she had glanced, shutting her lips firmly together as she saw that her plans had failed, and finally putting the document away where there was less hope of its ever finding its rightful owner than if it had remained with Juno. Had Mrs. Cameron supposed that Helen had already seen it, she would have returned it at once; but of this she had her doubts, after learning that "Miss Lennox did not go upstairs at all." Juno, then, must have been the delinquent; and though the mother shrank from the act as unladylike, if nothing more, she resolved to keep the letter till some inquiry was made for it at least. And so Helen, sitting by her window, and looking dreamily out into the street, with a feeling of sad foreboding as she thought of the dark cloud which had burst so suddenly upon the nation's horizon, enveloping Mark Ray in its dark fold, and bearing him away, possibly never to return again, had no suspicion of the truth, and did not guess how anxiously the young man was anticipating the interview at Sybil Grandon's, scarcely doubting that she would be there, and fancying just the expression of her eyes when they first met his. Alas for Mark, also for Helen, that both should be so cruelly deceived. Had the latter known of the loving words sent from the true heart which longed for some word of hers to lighten the long march and beguile the tedious days of absence, she would not have said to Katy, when asked if going to Mrs. Grandon's, "Oh, no; please don't urge me. I would so much rather stay at home."