ON AN AFTERNOON of the following week, Scarlett came home from the hospital weary and indignant. She was tired from
standing on her feet all morning and irritable because Mrs. Merriwether had scolded her sharply for sitting on a soldier
’s bed while she dressed his wounded arm. Aunt Pitty and Melanie, bonneted in their best were on the porch with Wade and
Prissy, ready for their weekly round of calls. Scarlett asked to be excused from accompanying them and went upstairs to
her room.
When the last sound of carriage wheels had died away and she knew the family was safely out of sight she slipped
quietly into Melanie’s room and turned the key in the lock. It was a prim, virginal little room and it lay still and
warm in the slanting rays of the four-o’clock sun. The floors were glistening and bare except for a few bright rag rugs,
and the white walls unornamented save for one corner which Melanie had fitted up as a shrine.
Here, under a draped Confederate flag, hung the gold-hilted saber that Melanie’s father had carried in the Mexican
War, the same saber Charles had worn away to war. Charles’ sash and pistol belt hung there too, with his revolver in the
holster. Between the saber and the pistol was a daguerreotype of Charles himself, very stiff and proud in his gray
uniform, his great brown eyes shining out of the frame and a shy smile on his lips.
Scarlett did not even glance at the picture but went unhesitatingly across the room to the square rosewood writing box
that stood on the table beside the narrow bed. From it she took a pack of letters tied together with a blue ribbon,
addressed in Ashley’s hand to Melanie. On the top was the letter which had come that morning and this one she opened.
When Scarlett first began secretly reading these letters, she had been so stricken of conscience and so fearful of
discovery she could hardly open the envelopes for trembling. Now, her never-too-scrupulous sense of honor was dulled by
repetition of the offense and even fear of discovery had subsided. Occasionally, she thought with a sulking heart, “What
would Mother say if she knew?” She knew Ellen would rather see her dead than know her guilty of such dishonor. This had
worried Scarlett at first, for she still wanted to be like her mother in every respect. But the temptation to read the
letters was too great and she put the thought of Ellen out of her mind. She had become adept at putting unpleasant
thoughts out of her mind these days. She had learned to say, “I won’t think of this or that bothersome thought now. I’
ll think about it tomorrow. Generally when tomorrow came, the thought either did not occur at all or it was so attenuated
by the delay it was not very troublesome. So the matter of Ashley’s letters did not lie very heavily on her conscience.
Melanie was always generous with the letters, reading parts of them aloud to Aunt Pitty and Scarlett. But it was the
part she did not read that tormented Scarlett, that drove her to surreptitious reading of her sister-in-law’s mail. She
had to know if Ashley had come to love his wife since marrying her. She had to know if he even pretended to love her. Did
he address tender endearments to her? What sentiments did he express and with what warmth?
She carefully smoothed out the letter.
Ashley’s small even writing leaped up at her as she read, “My dear wife,” and she breathed in relief. He wasn’t
calling Melanie “Darling” or “Sweetheart” yet.
“My Dear wife: You write me saying you are alarmed lest I be concealing my real thoughts from you and you ask me what
is occupying my mind these days—”
“Mother of God!” thought Scarlett, in a panic of guilt “ ‘Concealing his real thoughts.’ Can Melly have read his
mind? Or my mind? Does she suspect that he and I—”
