Instead of these funds, so greatly needed, came the tidings of a
Union defeat, with her husband's name down among the missing.
Beyond that brief mention, so horrible in its vagueness, she had
never heard a word from the one who not only sustained her home,
but also her heart. Was he languishing in a Southern prison, or,
mortally wounded, had he lingered out some terrible hours on that
wild battlefield, a brief description of which had been so dwelt
upon by her morbid fancy that it had become like one of the scenes
in Dante's "Inferno"? For a long time she could not and would not
believe that such an overwhelming disaster had befallen her and
her children, although she knew that similar losses had come to
thousands of others. Events that the world regards as not only
possible but probable are often so terrible in their personal
consequences that we shrink from even the bare thought of their
occurrence.
If Mrs. Marlow had been told from the first that her husband was
dead, the shock resulting would not have been so injurious as the
suspense that robbed her of rest for days, weeks, and months.
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