Then Mrs. Bunker looked round the room, and down upon her empty finger,
and knew that it was the end of her dream. It was all over now--indeed,
with the picture of that proud, insolent woman before her she wondered
if it had ever begun. This was the woman she had allowed herself to
think SHE might be. This was the woman HE was thinking of when he sat
there; this was the Mrs. Fairfax the officers had spoken of, and who
had made her--Mrs. Bunker--the go-between for their love-making! All
the work that she had done for him, the deceit she had practiced on her
husband, was to bring him and this woman together! And they both knew
it, and had no doubt laughed at her and her pretensions!

It was with a burning cheek that she thought how she had intended to go
to Marion, and imagined herself arriving perhaps to find that shameless
woman already there. In her vague unformulated longings she had never
before realized the degradation into which her foolish romance might
lead her. She saw it now; that humiliating moral lesson we are all apt
to experience in the accidental display of our own particular vices in
the person we hate, she had just felt in Mrs. Fairfax's presence. With
it came the paralyzing fear of her husband's discovery of her secret.
Secure as she had been in her dull belief that he had in some way
wronged her by marrying her, she for the first time began to doubt if
this condoned the deceit she had practiced on him. The tribute Mrs.
Fairfax had paid him--this appreciation of his integrity and honesty
by an enemy and a woman like herself--troubled her, frightened her, and
filled her with her first jealousy! What if this woman should tell him
all; what if she should make use of him as Marion had of her! Zephas was
a strong Northern partisan, but was he proof against the guileful
charms of such a devil? She had never thought before of questioning his
fidelity to her; she suddenly remembered now some rough pleasantries of