The horses were clattering up towards the house.

A voice of command was heard through the window.

"Halt! Guard the windows and the rear, you four!"

"Colden's voice!" exclaimed Peyton.

Elizabeth was somewhat startled. "He must have been still at King's Bridge when Sam arrived," said she.

"He must be a close friend," said Peyton.

"He is my affianced husband."

Peyton staggered, as if shot, around the projection of the spinet, and came to a rest in the small space between that projection and the west wall of the room. "Her affianced! Then it's all up with me!"

The outside door was heard to open. Elizabeth turned her back towards the spinet and Peyton, and faced the door to the hall. That, too, was flung wide. Peyton dropped on his right knee, behind the spinet, leaning forward and stretching his wounded leg out behind him, just as Colden rushed in at the head of six of the Queen's Rangers, who were armed with short muskets. The major stopped short at sight of Elizabeth, and the rangers stood behind him, just within the door. Peyton was hidden by the spinet.

"Where is the rebel, Elizabeth?" cried Colden.

She met his gaze straight, and spoke calmly, with a barely perceptible tremor.

"You are too late, Jack! The prisoner has eluded me. Look for him on the road to Tarrytown,—and be quick about it, for God's sake!"

Colden drew back aghast, thrown from the height of triumph to the depth of chagrin. Peyton, fearing lest the one joyous bound of his heart might have betrayed him, remained perfectly still, knowing that if any movement should take Elizabeth from between the soldiers and the projection of the spinet, or if the soldiers should enter further and chance to look under the spinet, he would be seen.

"Don't you understand?" said Elizabeth, assuming one impatience to conceal another. "There's no time to lose! 'Twas the rebel Peyton! He's afoot!"

"The road to Tarrytown, you say?" replied Colden, gathering back his faculties.

"Yes, to Tarrytown! Why do you wait?" Her vehemence of tone sufficed to cover the growing insupportability of her situation.

"To the road again, men!" Colden ordered. "Till we meet, Elizabeth!" And he hastened, with the rangers, from the place.



Peyton and Elizabeth remained motionless till the sound of the horses was afar. Then Elizabeth called Williams, who, as she had supposed, had come into the hall with the rangers. He now entered the parlor. Elizabeth, whose back was still towards Peyton, who had risen and was leaning on the spinet, addressed the steward in a low, embarrassed tone, as if ashamed of the weakness newly come over her.

"Williams, this gentleman will remain in the house till his wound is healed. His presence is to be a secret in the household. He will occupy the southwestern chamber." She then turned and spoke, in a constrained manner, to Peyton, not meeting his look. "It is the room your General Washington had when he was my father's guest."

With an effort, she raised her eyes to his, but shyly dropped them again. He bowed his thanks gravely, rather shamefaced at the success of his deception. A moment later, Elizabeth, with averted glance, walked quickly from the room.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE SECRET PASSAGE.

The steward immediately set about preparing the designated chamber for occupancy, so that Peyton, on being carried up to it a few minutes later, found it warm and lighted. It was a large, square, panelled apartment, in which the fireplace of 1682 remained unchanged, a wide, deep, square opening, faced with Dutch tile, of which there were countless pieces, each piece having a picture of some Scriptural incident. Into this fireplace, where a log was burning crisply, Peyton gazed languidly as he lay on the bed, his clothes having been removed by black Sam, who had been assigned to attend him, and who now lay in the wide hall without. Williams had taken another look at the wound, and expressed a favorable opinion of its condition. A lighted candle was placed within Peyton's reach, on a table by the bedside. Williams had brought him, at Elizabeth's orders, part of what remained from the general supper. The captain felt decidedly comfortable.

He supposed that Colden, after abandoning the false chase, would make another call at the house, but he inferred from Elizabeth's previous conduct that she could and would send the Tory major and the rangers back to King's Bridge without opportunity of discovering her guest. And, indeed, Elizabeth had so provided. On returning to the dining-room from her fateful interview with Peyton, she had answered the astonished and inquisitive looks of Miss Sally and Mr. Valentine, by saying, in an abrupt and reserved manner, "For important reasons I have chosen not to give the prisoner up. He will stay in the house for a time, and nobody is to know he is here. Please remember, Mr. Valentine." The old man tried to recall Peyton's words in asking him to send Elizabeth to the parlor, and made a mental effort to put this and that together; failing in which, he decided to repeat nothing of Peyton's conversation, lest it might in some way appear that he had "lent aid." He now lighted his lantern, and sallied forth on his long walk homeward over the windswept roads. Elizabeth, who, much to the dismay of her aunt's curiosity, had not broken silence save to give orders to the servants, now charged Williams to stay up till Colden should return, and to inform him that all were abed, that there was no news of the escaped prisoner, and that she desired the major to hasten to New York and relieve her family's anxiety. This command the steward executed about midnight, with the result that the major, utterly tired out and sadly disappointed, rode away from the manor-house a third time that night, more disgruntled than on either of the two previous occasions. By this time the house was dark and silent, Elizabeth and her aunt having long retired, the latter with a remark concerning the effect of late hours on the complexion, a hope that Mr. Valentine would not fall into a puddle on the way home, and a curiosity as to how the rebel captain fared.

The rebel captain, afar in his spacious chamber, was mentally in a state of felicity. As he ceased to remember the conquered, abashed look Elizabeth's face had last worn, he ceased to feel ashamed of having deceived her. Her earlier manner recurred to his mind, and he jubilated inwardly over having got the better of this arrogant and vengeful young creature. Even had she been otherwise, and had his life depended on tricking her with a pretence of love, he would have valued his life far above her feelings, and would not have hesitated to practise on her a falsehood that many a gentleman has practised on many a maid for no higher purpose than for the sport or for the testing of his powers, and often for no other purpose than the maid's undoing in more than her feelings. How much less, then, need he consider her feelings when he regarded her as an enemy in war, of whom it was his right to take all possible advantage for the saving of his own or any other American soldier's life! These thoughts came only at those moments when it occurred to him that his act might need justification. But if he thought he was entitled to avail himself of these excuses, he deceived himself, for no such considerations had been in his mind before or during his act. He had proceeded on the impulse of self-preservation alone, with no further thought as to the effect on her feelings than the hope that her feelings would be moved in his behalf. He had been totally selfish in the matter, and yet, while it is true he had not stopped to reason whether the act was morally justifiable or not, he had felt that her attitude warranted his deception, or, rather, he had not felt that the deception was a discreditable act, as he might have felt had her attitude been kindlier. Even had he possessed any previous scruples about that act, he would have overcome them. As it was, the scruples came only when he thought of that new, chastened, subdued look on her face. Only then did he feel that his trick might be debatable, as to whether it became a gentleman. Only then did he take the trouble to seek justifiable circumstances. Only then did he have a dim sense of what might be the feelings of a girl suddenly stormed into love. He had never been sufficiently in love to know how serious a feeling—serious in its tremendous potency for joy or pain—love is. In Virginia, in London, and in Ireland, he had indulged himself in such little flirtations, such amours of an hour, as helped make up a young gentleman's amusements. But he had long been, as he was now, heart-free, and, though it occurred to him that, in this girl, so great a change of mien must arise from a pronounced change of heart, he had no thought that her new mood could have deep root or long life. So, less from what thoughts he did have on the subject than from his absence of thought thereon, he lapsed into peace of mind, and went to sleep, rejoicing in his security and trusting it would last. Her face did not appear in his dreams. He had not retained a strong or accurate impression of that face. His mind had been too full of other things, even while enacting his impromptu love-scene, to make note of her beauty. He had been sensible, of course, that she was beautiful, but there had not been time or circumstance for flirtation. He had not for an instant viewed her as a possible object of conquest for its own sake. She had been to him only an enemy, in the shape of a beautiful young girl, and of whom it had become necessary to make use. And so his dreams that night were made up of wild cavalry charges, rides through the wind, and painful crushings and tearings of his leg.

Elizabeth's thoughts were in a whirl, her feelings beyond analysis. She was sensible mainly of a wholly novel and vast pleasure at the adoration so impetuously expressed for her by this audacious stranger, of a pride in his masterful way, of applause for that very manner which she had rebuked as insolence. Was this love at last? Undoubtedly; for she had read all the romances and plays and poems, and, if this feeling of hers were a thing other than the love they all described, they would have described such a feeling also. Because she had never felt its soft touch before, she had thought herself exempt from it. But now that it had found lodgment in her, she knew it at once, from the very fact that in a flash she understood all the romances and plays and poems that had before interested her but as mere tales, whose motives had seemed arbitrary and insufficient. Now they all took reality and reason. She knew at last why Hero threw herself into the Hellespont after Leander, why all that commotion was caused by Helen of Troy, why Oriana took such trouble for Mirabel, why Juliet died on Romeo's body, why Miss Richland paid Honeywood's debts. The moon, rushing through a cleft in the clouds (she had opened one of the shutters on putting out the candles), had for her a sudden beauty which accounted for the fine things the poets had said of it and love together. Yes, because it opened on her world of romance a magic window, letting in a wondrous light, waking that world to throbbing life, clothing it with indescribable charm, she knew the name of the key that had unlocked her own heart. Now she knew them all,—the heroes, the fairy princes, the knights errant; perceived that they were real and live, recognized their traits and manners, their very faces, in that bold, free, strong young rebel; he was Orlando, and Lovelace, and Prince Charming, and AEneas, and Tom Jones, and King Harry the Fifth, and young Marlowe, and even Captain Macheath (she had read forbidden books guilelessly, in course of reading everything at hand), and Roderick Random, and Captain Plume, and all the conquering, gallant, fine young fellows, at the absurd weakness of whose sweethearts she had marvelled beyond measure. She understood that weakness now, and knew, too, why those sweethearts had, in the first delicious hours of their weakness, trembled and dropped their eyes before those young gentlemen. For, as she mentally beheld his image, she felt her own cheeks glow, and in imagination was fain to drop her own eyes before his bold, unquailing look. She wondered, with confusion and unseen blushes, how she would face him at their next meeting, and felt that she must not, could not, be the one to cause that meeting. Right surely had this fair castle, that had withstood many a long siege, fallen now at a single onslaught, and that but a sham onslaught. The haughty princess in her tower had not longed for the prince, but the prince had arrived, not to her rescue, but to the taming of her. And alas! the prince, whom she fondly thought her lover, was no more lover of her than of the picture of her female ancestor on his bedroom wall!

She gave no thought to consequences, and, as for Jack Colden, she simply, by power of will, kept him out of her mind.

It was three days before Peyton could walk about his room, and two days more before he felt sufficient confidence in his wounded leg to come down-stairs and take his meals with the household. And even then, refusing a crutch, he used a stick in moving about. During the five days when he kept his room, he was waited on alternately by Sam and Cuff, who served at his bath and brought his food; and occasionally Molly carried to him at dinner some belated delicacy or forgotten dish. Williams, too, visited him daily, and expressed a kind of professional satisfaction at the uninterrupted healing of the wound, which the steward treated with the mysterious applications known to home surgery. Williams lent his own clean linen to Harry, while Harry's underwent washing and mending at the hands of the maid. Old Valentine, who visited the house every day, the weather being cold and sometimes cloudy, but without rain, called at the sick chamber now and then, and filled it with tobacco smoke, homely philosophy, and rustic reminiscence. Harry had no other visitors. During these five days he saw not Elizabeth or Miss Sally, save from his window twice or thrice, at which times they were walking on the terrace. In daytime, when no artificial light was in the room to betray to some possible outsider the presence of a guest, he had the shutters opened of one of the two south windows and of one of the two west ones. Often he reclined near a window, pleasing his eyes with the view. Westward lay the terrace, the wide river, the leafy, cliffs, and fair rolling country beyond. His eye could take in also the deer paddock, which the hand of war had robbed of its inmates, and the great orchard northward overlooking the river. Through the south window he could see the little branch road and boat-landing, the old stone mill, the winding Neperan and its broad mill-pond, and the sloping, ravine-cut, wooded stretch of country, between the post-road on the left and the deep-set Hudson on the right. The spire of St. John's Church, among the yew-trees, with the few edifices grouped near it, broke gratefully the deserted aspect of things, at the left. The spacious scene, so richly filled by nature, had in its loneliness and repose a singular sweetness. Rarely was any one abroad. Only when the Hessians or Loyalist dragoons patrolled the post-road, or when some British sloop-of-war showed its white sails far down the river, was there sign of human life and conflict. The deserted look of things was in harmony with the spirit of a book with which Harry sweetened the long hours of his recovery. It was a book that Elizabeth had sent up for his amusement, called "The Man of Feeling," and there was something in the opening picture of the venerable mansion, with its air of melancholy, its languid stillness, its "single crow, perched on an old tree by the side of the gate," and its young lady passing between the trees with a book in her hand, that harmonized with his own sequestered state. He liked the tale better than the same author's later novel, "The Man of the World," which he had read a few years before. Every day he inquired about his hostess's health, and sent his compliments and thanks. He was glad she did not visit him in person, for such a visit might involve an allusion to their last previous interview, and he did not know in what manner he should make or treat such allusion. He felt it would be an awkward matter to get out of the situation of pretended adorer, and he was for putting that awkward matter off till the last possible moment.

It was necessary for him to think of his return to the army. Duty and inclination required he should make that return as soon as could be. His first impulse had been to send word of his whereabouts and condition. But as Elizabeth had not offered a messenger, he was loath to ask for one. Moreover, the messenger might be intercepted by the enemy's patrols and induced by fear to betray the message. Then, too, even if the messenger should reach the American lines uncaught, a consequent attempt to convey a wounded man from the manor hall to the camp might attract the attention of the vigilant patrols, and risk not only Harry's own recapture, but also the loss of other men. Decidedly, the best course was to await the healing of his wound, and then to make his way alone, under cover of night, to the army. He knew that, whatever might occur, it was now Elizabeth's interest to protect him, for should she give him up, the disclosure that she had formerly shielded him would render her liable to suspicion and ridicule. He felt, too, from the manifestations he had seen of her will and of her ingenuity, that she was quite able to protect him. So he rested in security in the quiet old chamber, dreading only the task of taking back his love-making. Of that task, the difficulty would depend on Elizabeth's own conduct, which he could not foresee, and that in turn on her state of heart, which he did not exactly divine. He knew only that she had, in that critical moment of the troops' arrival, felt for him a tenderness that betokened love. Whether that feeling had flourished or declined, he could not, during the five days when they did not meet, be aware.

It had not declined. She had gone on idealizing the confident rebel captain all the while. The fact that he was of the enemy added piquancy to the sentiments his image aroused. It lent, too, an additional poetic interest to the idea of their love. Was not Romeo of the enemies of Juliet's house? The fact of her being now his protector, by its oppositeness to the conventional situation, gave to their relation the charm of novelty, and also gratified her natural love of independence and domination. Yet that very love, in a woman, may afford its owner keen delight by receiving quick and confident opposition and conquest from a man, and such Elizabeth's had received from Peyton, both in the matter of the horse and in that of his successful wooing. But the greater her softness for him, the greater was her delicacy regarding him, and the more in conformity with the strictest propriety must be her conduct towards him. Her pride demanded this tribute of her love, in compensation for the latter's immense exactions on the former in the sudden yielding to his wooing. Moreover, she would not appear in anything short of perfection in his eyes. She would not make her company cheap to him. If she had been a quick conquest, up to the point of her first token of submission, she would be all the slower in the subsequent stages, so that the complete yielding should be no easier than ought to be that of one valued as she would have him value her. All this she felt rather than thought, and she acted on it punctiliously.

She did not confide in her aunt, though that lady watched her closely and had her suspicions. Yet there was apparent so little warrant for these suspicions, save the protection of the rebel in itself, that Miss Sally often imagined Elizabeth had other reasons, reasons of policy, for the sudden change of intention that had resulted in that protection. Elizabeth's conduct was always so mystifying to everybody! And when this thought possessed Miss Sally, she underwent a pleasing agitation, which she in turn kept secret, and which attended the hope that perhaps the handsome captain might not be averse to her conversation. She had both read and observed that the taste of youth sometimes was for ripeness. She might atone, in a measure, for Elizabeth's disdain. She would have liked to visit him daily, with condolence and comfortings, but she could not do so without previous sanction of the mistress of the house, which sanction Elizabeth briefly but very peremptorily refused. Miss Sally thought it a cruelty that the prisoner should be deprived of what consolation her society might afford, and dwelt on this opinion until she became convinced he was actually pining for her presence. This made her poutish and reproachfully silent to Elizabeth, and sighful and whimsical to herself. The slightly strained feeling that arose between aunt and niece was quite acceptable to Elizabeth, as it gave her freedom for her own dreams, and prohibited any occasion for an expression of feelings or opinions of her own as to the captain. But Miss Sally's symptoms were observed by old Mr. Valentine, who, inferring their cause, underwent much unrest on account of them, became snappish and sarcastic towards the lady, watchful both of her and of Peyton, and moody towards the others in the house. It was the old man's disquietude regarding the state of Miss Sally's affections that brought him to the house every day. For one brief while he considered the advisability of transferring his attentions back from Miss Sally to the widow Babcock, who had possessed them first, but, when he tarried in the parsonage, his fears as to what might be going on in the manor-house made his stay in the former intolerable, and led him irresistibly to the latter.

Meanwhile the wounded guest, so unconscious of the states of mind caused by him in the household, was the evoker of flutters in yet another female breast. The girl, Molly, had read toilsomely through "Pamela," and saw no reason why an equally attractive housemaid should not aspire to an equally high destiny on this side of the ocean. But, often as she artfully contrived that the black boy should forget some part of the guest's dinner, and timely as she planned her own visits with the missing portion, she found the officer heedless of her smiles, engrossed sometimes in his meal, sometimes in his book, sometimes in both. She conceived a loathing for that book, more than once resisted a temptation to make way with it, and, having one day stolen a look into it, thenceforth abominated the poor young lady of it, with all the undying bitterness of an unpreferred rival.

Though Elizabeth and her aunt found each other reticent, they yet passed their time together, breakfasting early, then visiting the widow Babcock or some tenant, dining at noon, spending the early afternoon, the one at her book or embroidery, the other in a siesta before the fireplace, supping early, then preparing for the night by a brisk walk in the garden, or on the terrace, or to the orchard and back. Elizabeth had Williams provided with instructions as to his conduct in the event of a visit from King's troops, and, to make Peyton's security still less uncertain, she confined her walks to the immediate vicinity. The house itself was kept in a pretence of being closed, the shutters of the parlor being skilfully adjusted to admit light, and yet, from the road, appear fast.

Thus Elizabeth, finding enjoyment in the very look and atmosphere of the old house, fulfilled quietly the purpose of her capricious visit, and at the same time cherished a dreamy pleasure such as she had not thought of finding in that visit.

On the fifth day after Peyton's arrival, Williams announced that the captain would venture down-stairs on the morrow. The next morning Elizabeth waited in the east parlor to receive him. Whatever inward excitement she underwent, she was on the surface serene. She was dressed in her simplest, having purposely avoided any appearance of desiring to appear at her best. Her aunt, who stood with her, on the other side of the fireplace, was perceptibly flustered, being got up for the occasion, with ribbons in evidence and smiles ready for production on the instant. When the west door opened, and the awaited hero entered, pale but well groomed, using his cane in such fashion that he could carry himself erectly, Elizabeth greeted him with formal courtesy. Though her manner had the repose necessary to conceal her sweet agitation, an observant person might have noticed a deference, a kind of meekness, that was new in her demeanor towards men. Peyton, whose mien (though not his feeling) was a reflex of her own, was relieved at this appearance of indifference, and hoped it would continue. His mind being on this, the stately curtsey and profuse smirks of Miss Sally were quite lost on him.

The three breakfasted together in the dining-room, a large and cheerful apartment whose front windows, looking on the lawn, were the middle features of the eastern facade of the house. The mass of decorative woodwork, and the fireplace in the north side of the room, added to its impression of comfort as well as to its beauty. Conversation at the breakfast was ceremonious and on the most indifferent subjects, despite the attempts of Miss Sally, who would have monopolized Peyton's attention, to inject a little cordial levity. After breakfast Elizabeth, to avoid the appearance of distinguishing the day, took her aunt off for the usual walk, which she purposely prolonged to unusual length, much to Miss Sally's annoyance. Peyton passed the morning in reading a new play that had made great talk in London the year before, namely, "The School for Scandal." It was one of the new books received by Colonel Philipse from London, by a recent English vessel,—plays being, in those days, good enough to be much read in book form,—and brought out from town by Elizabeth. The dinner was, as to the attitude of the participants towards one another, a repetition of the breakfast. In the afternoon, Peyton having expressed an intention of venturing outdoors for a little air, Elizabeth assigned Sam to attend him, and said that, as he had to traverse the south hall and stairs in going to his room, he might thereafter put to his own service the unused south door in leaving and entering the house. Harry strolled for a few minutes on the terrace, but his lameness made walking little pleasure, and he returned to the east parlor, where Elizabeth sat reading while her aunt was looking drowsily at the fire. Peyton took a chair at the right side of the fireplace, and mentally contrasted his present security with his peril in that place on a former occasion.

The trampling of horses at a distance elicited from Elizabeth the words, "The Hessian patrol, on the Albany road, as usual, I suppose." But, the clatter increasing, she arose and looked through the narrow slit whereby light was admitted between the almost closed shutters. After a moment she said, in unconcealed alarm:

"Oh, heaven! 'Tis a party of Lord Cathcart's officers! They said at King's Bridge they'd come one day to pay their respects. How can I keep them out?"

Peyton arose, but remained by the fireplace, and said, "To keep them out, if they think themselves expected, would excite suspicion. I will go to my room."

Elizabeth, meanwhile, had opened the window to draw the shutter close; but her trembling movement, assisted by a passing breeze, and by the perversity of inanimate things, caused the shutter to fly wide open.

She turned towards Peyton, with signs of fright on her face. "Back!" she whispered. "They'll see you through the window. Into the closet,—the closet!" She motioned imperatively towards the pair of doors immediately beside him, west of the fireplace. Hearing the horses' footfalls near at hand, and perceiving, with her, that he would not have time to walk safely across the parlor to the hall, he opened one of the doors indicated by her, and stepped into the closet.

In the instant before he closed the door after him, he noticed the stairs descending backward from the right side of the closet. He foresaw that the British officers would come into the parlor. If they should make a long stay, he might have to change his position during their presence. He might thus cause sufficient sound to attract attention. He would be in better case further away. Therefore, using his stick and feeling the route with his hand, he made his way down the steps to a landing, turned to the right, descended more steps, and found himself in a dark cellar. He had no sooner reached the last step than a burst of hearty greetings from above informed him the officers were in the parlor.

This part of the cellar being damp, he set out in search of a more comfortable spot wherein to bestow himself the necessary while. Groping his way, and travelling with great labor, he at last came into a kind of corridor formed between two rolls of piled-up barrels. He proceeded along this passage until it was blocked by a barrel on the ground. On this he sat down, deciding it as good a staying-place as he might find. Leaning back, he discovered with his head what seemed to be a thick wooden partition close to the barrel. Changing his position, he bumped his head against an iron something that lay horizontally against the partition, and so violent was this collision that the iron something was moved from its place, a fact which he noted on the instant but immediately forgot in the sharpness of his pain.

Having at last made himself comfortable, he sat waiting in the darkness, thinking to let some time pass before returning to the closet stairway. An hour or more had gone by, when he heard a door open, which he knew must be at the head of some other stairway to the cellar, and a jocund voice cry: "Damme, we'll be our own tapsters! Give me the candle, Mr. Williams, and if my nose doesn't pull me to the barrel in one minute, may it never whiff spirits again!" A moment later, quick footfalls sounded on the stairs, then candle-light disturbed the blackness, and Williams was heard saying, "This way, gentlemen, if you insist. The barrel is on the ground, straight ahead." Whereupon Peyton saw two merry young Englishmen enter the very passage at whose end he sat, one bearing the candle, both followed by the steward, who carried a spigot and a huge jug.

Harry instantly divined the cause of this intrusion. The servants were busy preparing refreshments for the officers, and, in a spirit of gaiety, these two had volunteered to help Williams fetch the liquor which he, not knowing Harry's whereabouts, was about to draw from the barrel on which Harry sat.

It was not Elizabeth who could save him from discovery now.

The officers came groping towards him up the narrow passage.

Before the candle-light reached him, he rose and got behind the barrel, there being barely room for his legs between it and the partition. He had, in dressing for the day, put on his scabbard and his broken sword. He now took his stick in his left hand, and drew his sword with his right. He set his teeth hard together, thought of nothing at all, or rather of everything at once, and waited.

"Hear the rats," said one of the Englishmen. It was Peyton's stealthy movement he had heard.

"Ay, sir, there's often a terrible scampering of 'em," said Williams.

"Maybe I can pink a rat or two," said the officer without the candle, and drew his sword. Harry braced himself rapidly against the woodwork at his back. The candle-light touched the barrel.

At that instant Harry felt the woodwork give way behind him, and fell on his back on the ground.

"What's that?" cried the officer with the candle, standing still.

"Tis the scampering of the rats, of course," said the other.

Harry had apprehended, by this time, that the supposed wooden partition was in reality a door in the cellar wall. He now pushed it shut with his foot, remaining outside of it, then rose, and, feeling about him, discovered that his present place was in a narrow arched passage that ran, from the door in the cellar wall, he knew not how far. Recalling the bumping of his head, he inferred now that the iron something was a bolt, and that his blow had forced it from its too large socket in the stone wall.

He proceeded onward in the dark passage for some distance, then stopped to listen. No sound coming from the door he had closed, he decided that the officers were satisfied the noise had been of the rats' making. He sheathed his broken sword, having retained that and his stick in his fall, and went forward, hoping to find a habitable place of waiting. Soon the passage widened into a kind of subterranean room, one side of which admitted light. Going to this side, Harry stopped short at the verge of a well, on whose circumference the subterranean chamber abutted. The light came from the well's top, which was about ten feet above the low roof of the underground room, the passage from the cellar being on a descent. In this artificial cave were wooden chests, casks, and covered earthen vessels, these contents proclaiming the place a secret storage-room designed for use in siege or in military occupation. Harry waited here a while that seemed half a day, then returned through the passage to the door, intending to return to the cellar. He listened at the door, found all quiet beyond, and made to push open the door. It would not move. From the feel of the resistance, he perceived that the bolt had been pushed home again—as indeed it had, by the steward, who had noticed it while tapping the barrel, and had imputed its being drawn to some former carelessness of his own.

Peyton, finding himself thus barred into the subterranean regions, was in a quandary. Any alarm he might attempt, by shouting or pounding, might not be heard, or, if heard, might reach some tarrying British. In due time, Elizabeth would doubtless have him looked for in the closet and then in the cellar, but, on his not being found there, would suppose he had left the cellar by one of the other stairways. Thus he could little hope to be sought for in his prison. Williams might at any time have occasion to visit the secret storeroom, but, on the other hand, he might not have such occasion for weeks. Harry groped back to the cave, and sought some way of escape by the well, but found none.

He then examined the cave more closely, and came finally on another passage than that by which he had entered. He followed this for what seemed an interminable length. At last, it closed up in front of him. He tested the barrier of raw earth with his hands, felt a great round stone projecting therefrom, pushed this stone in vain, then clasped it with both arms and pulled. It gave, and presently fell to the ground at his feet, leaving an aperture two feet across, which let in light. He crawled the short length of this, and breathed the open air in a small thicket on the sloping bank of the Hudson.[8] He crept to the thicket's edge, and saw, in the sunset light, the river before him; on the river, a British war-vessel; on the vessel, some naval officers, one of whom was looking, with languid preoccupation, straight at the thicket from which Harry gazed.



CHAPTER IX.

THE CONFESSION.

"What d'ye spy, Tom?" called out another officer on the deck, to the one whose attitude most interested Harry.

"I thought I made out some kind of craft steering through the bushes yonder," was the answer.

"I see nothing."

"Neither do I, now. 'Twasn't human craft, anyhow, so it doesn't signify," and the officers looked elsewhere.

Harry lay low in the thicket, awaiting the departure of the vessel or the arrival of darkness. On the deck there was no sign of weighing anchor. As night came, the vessel's lights were slung. The sky was partly clear in the west, and stars appeared in that direction, but the east was overcast, so that the rising moon was hid. The atmosphere grew colder.

When Harry could make out nothing of the vessel on the dark water, save the lights that glowed like low-placed stars, he crawled from the bushes and up the bank to the terrace. He then rose and proceeded, with the aid of his stick, aching from having so long maintained a cramped position, and from the suddenly increased cold. Before him, as he continued to ascend, rose the house, darkness outlined against darkness. No sound came from it, no window was lighted. This meant that the British officers had left, for their presence would have been marked by plenitude of light and by noise of merriment. Harry stopped on the terrace, and stood in doubt how to proceed. What had been thought of his disappearance? Where would he be supposed to have gone? Had provision been made for his possible return? Perhaps he should find a guiding light in some window on the other side of the house; perhaps a servant remained alert for his knock on the door. His only course was to investigate, unless he would undergo a night of much discomfort.

As he was about to approach the house, he was checked by a sight so vaguely outlined that it might be rather of his imagination than of reality, and which added a momentary shiver of a keener sort than he already underwent from the weather. A dark cloaked and hooded figure stood by the balustrade that ran along the roof-top. As Peyton looked, his hand involuntarily clasping his sword-hilt, and the stories of the ghosts that haunted this old mansion shot through his mind, the figure seemed to descend through the very roof, as a stage ghost is lowered through a trap. He continued to stare at the spot where it had stood, but nothing reappeared against the backing of black cloud. Wondering much, Harry presently went on towards the house, turned the southwest corner, and skirted the south front as far as to the little porch in its middle. Intending to reconnoitre all sides of the house before he should try one of the doors, he was passing on, after a glance at the south door lost in the blacker shadows of the porch, when suddenly the fan-window over the door seemed to glow dimly with a wavering light. He placed his hand on one of the Grecian pillars of the porch, and watched. A moment later the door softly opened. A figure appeared, beyond the threshold, bearing a candle. The figure wore a cloak with a hood, but the hood was down.

"All is safe," whispered a low voice. "The officers went hours ago. I knew you must have escaped from the house, and were hiding somewhere. I saw you a minute ago from the roof gallery."

Peyton having entered, Elizabeth swiftly closed and locked the door behind him, handed him the candle with a low "Good night," and fled silently, ghostlike, up the stairs, disappearing quickly in the darkness.

Harry made his way to his own room, as in a kind of dream. She herself had waited and watched for him! This, then, was the effect wrought in the proudest, most disdainful young creature of her sex, by that feeling which he had, by telling and acting a lie, awakened in her. The revelation set him thinking. How long might such a feeling last? What would be its effect on her after his departure? He had read, and heard, and seen, that, when these feelings were left to pine away slowly, the people possessing them pined also. And this was the return he was about to give his most hospitable hostess, the woman who had saved his life! Yet what was to be done? His life belonged to his country, his chosen career was war; he could not alter completely his destiny to save a woman some pining. After all, she would get over it; yet it would make of her another woman, embitter her, change entirely the complexion of the world to her, and her own attitude towards it. He tried to comfort himself with the thought of her engagement to Colden, of which he had not learned until after the mischief had been done. But he recalled her manner towards Colden, and a remark of old Mr. Valentine's, whence he knew that the engagement was not, on her side, a love one, and was not inviolable. Yet it would be a crime to a woman of her pride, of her power of loving, to allow the deceit, his pretence of love, to go as far as marriage. A disclosure would come in time, and would bring her a bitter awakening. The falsehood, natural if not excusable in its circumstances, and broached without thought of ultimate consequence, must be stopped at once. He must leave her presence immediately, but, before going, must declare the truth. She must not be allowed to waste another day of her life on an illusion. Aside from the effect on her heart, of the continuance of the delusion, it would doubtless affect her outward circumstances, by leading her to break her engagement with Colden. An immediate discovery of the truth, moreover, by creating such a revulsion of feeling as would make her hate him, would leave her heart in a state for speedy healing. This disclosure would be a devilishly unpleasant thing to make, but a soldier and a gentleman must meet unpleasant duties unflinchingly.

He lay a long time awake, disturbed by thoughts of the task before him. When he did sleep, it was to dream that the task was in progress, then that it was finished but had to be begun anew, then that countless obstacles arose in succession to hinder him in it. Dawn found him little refreshed in mind, but none the worse in body. He found, on arising, that he could walk without aid from the stick, and he required no help in dressing himself. Looking towards the river, he saw the British vessel heading for New York. But that sight gave him little comfort, thanks to the ordeal before him, in contemplating which he neglected to put on his sword and scabbard, and so descended to breakfast without them.

That meal offered no opportunity for the disclosure, the aunt being present throughout. Immediately after breakfast, the two ladies went for their customary walk. While they were breasting the wind, between two rows of box in the garden, Miss Sally spoke of Major Colden's intention to return for Elizabeth at the end of a week, and said, "'Twill be a week this evening since you arrived. Is he to come for you to-day or to-morrow?"

"I don't know," said Elizabeth, shortly.

"But, my dear, you haven't prepared—"

"I sha'n't go back to-day, that is certain. If Colden comes before to-morrow, he can wait for me,—or I may send him back without me, and stay as long as I wish."

"But he will meet Captain Peyton—"

"It can be easily arranged to keep him from knowing Captain Peyton is here. I shall look to that."

Miss Sally sighed at the futility of her inquisitorial fishing. Not knowing Elizabeth's reason for saving the rebel captain, she had once or twice thought that the girl, in some inscrutable whim, intended to deliver him up, after all. She had tried frequently to fathom her niece's purposes, but had never got any satisfaction.

"I suppose," she went on, desperately, "if you go back to town, you will leave the captain in Williams's charge."

"If I go back before the captain leaves," said Elizabeth, thereby dashing her amiable aunt's secretly cherished hope of affording the wounded officer the pleasure of her own unalloyed society.

Elizabeth really did not know what she would do. Her actions, on Colden's return, would depend on the prior actions of the captain. No one had spoken to Peyton of her intention to leave after a week's stay. She had thought such an announcement to him from her might seem to imply a hint that it was time he should resume his wooing. That he would resume it, in due course, she took for granted. Measuring his supposed feelings by her own real ones, she assumed that her loveless betrothal to another would not deter Peyton's further courtship. She believed he had divined the nature of that betrothal. Nor would he be hindered by the prospect of their being parted some while by the war. Engagements were broken, wars did not last forever, those who loved each other found ways to meet. So he would surely speak, before their parting, of what, since it filled her heart, must of course fill his. But she would show no forwardness in the matter. She therefore avoided him till dinner-time.

At the table he abruptly announced that, as duty required he should rejoin the army at the first moment possible, and as he now felt capable of making the journey, he would depart that night.

Miss Sally hid her startled emotions behind a glass of madeira, into which she coughed, chokingly. Molly, the maid, stopped short in her passage from the kitchen door to the table, and nearly dropped the pudding she was carrying. Elizabeth concealed her feelings, and told herself that his declaration must soon be forthcoming. She left it to him to contrive the necessary private interview.

After dinner, he sat with the ladies before the fire in the east parlor, awaiting his opportunity with much hidden perturbation. Elizabeth feigned to read. At last, habit prevailing, her aunt fell asleep. Peyton hummed and hemmed, looked into the fire, made two or three strenuous swallows of nothing, and opened his mouth to speak. At that instant old Mr. Valentine came in, newly arrived from the Hill, and "whew"-ing at the cold. Peyton felt like one for whom a brief reprieve had been sent by heaven.

All afternoon Mr. Valentine chattered of weather and news and old times. Peyton's feeling of relief was short-lasting; it was supplanted by a mighty regret that he had not been permitted to get the thing over. No second opportunity came of itself, nor could Peyton, who found his ingenuity for once quite paralyzed, force one. Supper was announced, and was partaken of by Harry, in fidgety abstraction; by Elizabeth, in expectant but outwardly placid silence; by Miss Sally, in futile smiling attempts to make something out of her last conversational chances with the handsome officer; and by Mr. Valentine, in sedulous attention to his appetite, which still had the vigor of youth.

Almost as soon as the ladies had gone from the dining-room, Peyton rose and left the octogenarian in sole possession. In the parlor Harry found no one but Molly, who was lighting the candles.

"What, Molly?" said he, feeling more and more nervous, and thinking to retain, by constant use of his voice, a good command of it for the dreaded interview. "The ladies not here? They left Mr. Valentine and me at the supper-table."

"They are walking in the garden, sir. Miss Elizabeth likes to take the air every evening."

"'Tis a chill air she takes this evening, I'm thinking," he said, standing before the fire and holding out his hands over the crackling logs.

"A chill night for your journey," replied Molly. "I should think you'd wait for day, to travel."

Peyton, unobservant of the wistful sigh by which the maid's speech was accompanied, replied, "Nay, for me, 'tis safest travelling at night. I must go through dangerous country to reach our lines."

"It mayn't be as cold to-morrow night," persisted Molly.

"My wound is well enough for me to go now."

"'Twill be better still to-morrow."

But Peyton, deep in his own preoccupation, neither deduced aught from the drift of her remarks nor saw the tender glances which attended them. While he was making some insignificant answer, the maid, in moving the candelabrum on the spinet, accidentally brushed therefrom his hat, which had been lying on it. She picked it up, in great confusion, and asked his pardon.

"'Twas my fault in laying it there," said he, receiving it from her. "I'm careless with my things. I make no doubt, since I've been here, I've more than once given your mistress cause to wish me elsewhere."

"La, sir," said Molly, "I don't think—any one would wish you elsewhere!" Whereupon she left the room, abashed at her own audacity.

"The devil!" thought Peyton. "I should feel better if some one did wish me elsewhere."

As he continued gazing into the fire, and his task loomed more and more disagreeably before him, he suddenly bethought him that Elizabeth, in taking her evening walk, showed no disposition for a private meeting. Dwelling on that one circumstance, he thought for awhile he might have been wrong in supposing she loved him. But then the previous night's incident recurred to his mind. Nothing short of love could have induced such solicitude. But, then, as she sought no last interview, might he not be warranted in going away and leaving the disclosure to come gradually, implied by the absence of further word from him? Yet, she might be purposely avoiding the appearance of seeking an interview. The reasons calling for a prompt confession came back to him. While he was wavering between one dictate and another, in came Mr. Valentine, with a tobacco pipe.

Like an inspiration, rose the idea of consulting the octogenarian. A man who cannot make up his own mind is justified in seeking counsel. Elizabeth could suffer no harm through Peyton's confiding in this sage old man, who was devoted to her and to her family. Mr. Valentine's very words on entering, which alluded to Peyton's pleasant visit as Elizabeth's guest, gave an opening for the subject concerned. A very few speeches led up to the matter, which Harry broached, after announcing that he took the old man for one experienced in matters of the heart, and receiving the admission that the old man had enjoyed a share of the smiles of the sex. But if the captain had thought, in seeking advice, to find reason for avoiding his ugly task, he was disappointed. Old Valentine, though he had for some days feared a possible state of things between the captain and Miss Sally, had observed Elizabeth, and his vast experience had enabled him to interpret symptoms to which others had been blind. "She has acted towards you," he said to Peyton, "as she never acted towards another man. She's shown you a meekness, sir, a kind of timidity." And he agreed that, if Peyton should go away without an explanation, it would make her throw aside other expectations, and would, in the end, "cut her to the heart." Valentine hinted at regrettable things that had ensued from a jilting of which himself had once been guilty, and urged on Peyton an immediate unbosoming, adding, "She'll be so took aback and so full of wrath at you, she won't mind the loss of you. She'll abominate you and get over it at once."

The idea came to Peyton of making the confession by letter, but this he promptly rejected as a coward's dodge. "It's a damned unpleasant duty, but that's the more reason I should face it myself."

At that moment the front door of the east hall was heard to open.

"It's Miss Elizabeth and her aunt," said Valentine, listening at the door.

"Then I'll have the thing over at once, and be gone! Mr. Valentine, a last kindness,—keep the aunt out of the room."

Before Valentine could answer, the ladies entered, their cheeks reddened by the weather. Elizabeth carried a small bunch of belated autumn flowers.

"Well, I'm glad to come in out of the cold!" burst out Miss Sally, with a retrospective shudder. "Mr. Peyton, you've a bitter night for your going." She stood before the fire and smiled sympathetically at the captain.

But Peyton was heedful of none but Elizabeth, who had laid her flowers on the spinet and was taking off her cloak. Peyton quickly, with an "Allow me, Miss Philipse," relieved her of the wrap, which in his abstraction he retained over his left arm while he continued to hold his hat in his other hand. After receiving a word of thanks, he added, "You've been gathering flowers," and stood before her in much embarrassment.

"The last of the year, I think," said she. "The wind would have torn them off, if aunt Sally and I had not." And she took them up from the spinet to breath their odor.

Meanwhile Mr. Valentine had been whispering to Miss Sally at the fireplace. As a result of his communications, whatever they were, the aunt first looked doubtful, then cast a wistful glance at Peyton, and then quietly left the room, followed by the old man, who carefully closed the door after him.

While Elizabeth held the flowers to her nostrils, Peyton continued to stand looking at her, during an awkward pause. At length she replaced the nosegay on the spinet, and went to the fireplace, where she gazed at the writhing flames, and waited for him to speak.

Still laden with the cloak and hat, he desperately began:

"Miss Philipse, I—ahem—before I start on my walk to-night—"

"Your walk?" she said, in slight surprise.

"Yes,—back to our lines, above."

"But you are not going to walk back," she said, in a low tone. "You are to have the horse, Cato."

Peyton stood startled. In a few moments he gulped down his feelings, and stammered:

"Oh—indeed—Miss Philipse—I cannot think of depriving you—especially after the circumstances."

She replied, with a gentle smile:

"You took the horse when I refused him to you. Now will you not have him when I offer him to you? You must, captain! I'll not have so fine a horse go begging for a master. I'll not hear of your walking. On such a night, such a distance, through such a country!"

"The devil!" thought Harry. "This makes it ten times harder!"

Elizabeth now turned to face him directly. "Does not my cloak incommode you?" she said, amusedly. "You may put it down."

"Oh, thank you, yes!" he said, feeling very red, and went to lay the cloak on the table, but in his confusion put down his own hat there, and kept the cloak over his arm. He then met her look recklessly, and blurted out:

"The truth is, Miss Philipse, now that I am soon to leave, I have something to—to say to you." His boldness here forsook him, and he paused.

"I know it," said Elizabeth, serenely, repressing all outward sign of her heart's blissful agitation.

"You do?" quoth he, astonished.

"Certainly," she answered, simply. "How could you leave without saying it?"

Peyton had a moment's puzzlement. Then, "Without saying what?" he asked.

"What you have to say," she replied, blushing, and lowering her eyes.

"But what have I to say?" he persisted.

She was silent a moment, then saw that she must help him out.

"Don't you know? You were not at all tongue-tied when you said it the evening you came here."

Peyton felt a gulf opening before him. "Good heaven," thought he, "she actually believes I am about to propose!"

Now, or never, was the time for the plunge. He drew a full breath, and braced himself to make it.

"But—ah—you see," said he, "the trouble is,—what I said then is not what I have to say now. You must understand, Miss Philipse, that I am devoted to a soldier's career. All my time, all my heart, my very life, belong to the service. Thus I am, in a manner, bound no less on my side, than you—I beg your pardon—"

"What do you mean?" She spoke quietly, yet was the picture of open-eyed astonishment.

"Cannot you see?" he faltered.

"You mean"—her tone acquired resentment as her words came—"that I, too, am bound on my side,—to Mr. Colden?"

"I did not say so," he replied, abashed, cursing his heedless tongue. He would not, for much, have reminded her of any duty on her part.

She regarded him for a moment in silence, while the clouds of indignation gathered. Then the storm broke.

"You poltroon, I do see! You wish to take back your declaration, because you are afraid of Colden's vengeance!"

"Afraid? I afraid?" he echoed, mildly, surprised almost out of his voice at this unexpected inference.

"Yes, you craven!" she cried, and seemed to tower above her common height, as she stood erect, tearless, fiery-eyed, and clarion-voiced. "Your cowardice outweighs your love! Go from my sight and from my father's house, you cautious lover, with your prudent scruples about the rights of your rival! Heavens, that I should have listened to such a coward! Go, I say! Spend no more time under this roof than you need to get your belongings from your room. Don't stop for farewells! Nobody wants them! Go,—and I'll thank you to leave my cloak behind you!"



Silenced and confounded by the force of her denunciation, he stupidly dropped the cloak to the floor where he stood, and stumbled from the room, as if swept away by the torrent of her wrath and scorn.



CHAPTER X.

THE PLAN OF RETALIATION.

It was in the south hall that he found himself, having fled through the west door of the parlor, forgetful that his hat still remained on the table. He naturally continued his retreat up the stairs to his chamber. The only belongings that he had to get there were his broken sword, his scabbard, and belt. These he promptly buckled on, resolved to leave the house forthwith.

Still tingling from the blow of her words, he yet felt a great relief that the task was so soon over, and that her speedy action had spared him the labor of the long explanation he had thought to make. As matters stood, they could not be improved. Her love had turned to hate, in the twinkling of an eye.

And yet, how preposterously she had accounted for his conduct! Dwelling on his hint, though it was checked at its utterance, that she was already bound, she had assumed that he held out her engagement to Colden as a barrier to their love. And she believed, or pretended to believe, that his regard for that barrier arose from fear of inviting a rival's vengeance! As if he, who daily risked his life, could fear the vengeance of a man whom he had already once defeated with the sword! It was like a woman to alight first on the most absurd possibility the situation could imply. And if she knew the conjecture was absurd, she was the more guilty of affront in crying it out against him. He, in turn, was now moved to anger. He would not have false motives imputed to him. It would be useless to talk to her while her present mood continued. But he could write, and leave the letter where it would be found. Inasmuch as he had faced the worst storm his disclosure could have aroused, there was no cowardice in resorting to a letter with such explanations as could not be brought to her mind in any other form. Two days previously, he had requested writing materials in his room, for the sketching of a report of his being wounded, and these were still on a table by the window. He lighted candles, and sat down to write.

When he had finished his document, sealed and addressed it, he laid it on the table, where it would attract the eye of a servant, and looked around for his hat. Presently he recalled that he had left it in the parlor. He first thought of seeking a servant, and sending for it, lest he might meet Elizabeth, should he again enter the parlor. But it would be better to face her, for a moment, than to give an order to a servant of a house whence he had been ordered out. And now, as he intended to go into the parlor, he would preferably leave the letter in that room, where it would perhaps reach her own eyes before any other's could fall on it. He therefore took up the letter, thrust it for the time in his belt, descended quietly to the south hall, cautiously opened the parlor door, peeped through the crack, saw with relief that only Miss Sally was in the room, threw the door wide, and strode quickly towards the table on which he thought he had left his hat.

But, as he approached, he saw that the hat was not there.

In the meantime, during the few minutes he had spent in his room, things had been occurring in this parlor. As soon as Peyton had left it, or had been carried out of it by the resistless current of Elizabeth's invective, the girl had turned her anger on herself, for having weakened to this man, made him her hero, indulged in those dreams! She could scarcely contain herself. Having mechanically picked up her cloak, where Peyton had let it fall, she evinced a sudden unendurable sense of her humiliation and folly, by hurling the cloak with violence across the room. At that moment old Mr. Valentine entered, placidly seeking his pipe, which he had left behind him.

The octogenarian looked surprisedly at the cloak, then at Elizabeth, then mildly asked her if she had seen his pipe.

"Oh, the cowardly wretch!" was Elizabeth's answer, her feelings forcing a release in speech.

"What, me?" asked the old man, startled, not yet having thought to connect her words with his last interview with the American officer. He looked at her for a moment, but, receiving no satisfaction, calmly refilled, from a leather pouch, his pipe, which he had found on the mantel.

Elizabeth's thoughts began to take more distinct shape, and, in order to formulate them the more accurately, she spoke them aloud to the old man, finding it an assistance to have a hearer, though she supposed him unable to understand.

"Yet he wasn't a coward that evening he rode to attack the Hessians,—nor when he was wounded,—nor when he stood here waiting to be taken! He was no coward then, was he, Mr. Valentine?" Getting no answer, and irritated at the old man's owl-like immovability, she repeated, with vehemence, "Was he?"

Mr. Valentine had, by this time, begun to put things together in his mind.

"No. To be sure," he chirped, and then lighted his pipe with a small fagot from the fireplace, an operation that required a good deal of time.

Elizabeth now spoke more as if to herself. "Perhaps, after all, I may be wrong! Yes, what a fool, to forget all the proofs of his courage! What a blind imbecile, to think him afraid! It must be that he acts from a delicate conception of honor. He would not encroach where another had the prior claim. He considers Colden in the matter. That's it, don't you think?"

"Of course," said Valentine, blindly, not having paid attention to this last speech, and sitting down in his armchair.

"I can understand now," she went on. "He did not know of my engagement that time he made love, when his life was at stake."

"Then he's told you all about it?" said the old man, beginning to take some interest, now that he had provided for his own comfort.

"About what?" asked Elizabeth, showing a woman's consistency, in being surprised that he seemed to know what she had been addressing him about.

"About pretending he loved you,—to save his life," replied Mr. Valentine, innocently, considering that her supposed acquaintance with the whole secret made him free to discuss it with her.

Elizabeth's astonishment, unexpected as it was by him, surprised the old man in turn, and also gave him something of a fright. So the two stared at each other.

"Pretending he loved me!" she repeated, reflectively. "Pretending! To save his life! Now I see!" The effect of the revelation on her almost made Mr. Valentine jump out of his chair. "For only I could save him!" she went on. "There was no other way! Oh, how I have been fooled! I—tricked by a miserable rebel! Made a laughing-stock! Oh, to think he did not really love me, and that I—Oh, I shall choke! Send some one to me,—Molly, aunt Sally, any one! Go! Don't sit there gazing at me like an owl! Go away and send some one!"

Mr. Valentine, glad of reason for an honorable retreat from this whirlwind that threatened soon to fill the whole room, departed with as much activity as he could command.

"Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?" Elizabeth asked of the air around her. "I must repay him for his duplicity. I shall never rest a moment till I do! What an easy dupe he must think me! Oh-h-h!"

She brought her hand violently down on the table but fortunately struck something comparatively soft. In her fury, she clutched this something, raised it from the table, and saw what it was.

"His hat!" she cried, and made to throw it into the fire, but, with a woman's aim, sent it flying towards the door, which was at that instant opened by her aunt, who saved herself by dodging most undignifiedly.

"What is it, my dear?" asked Miss Sally, in a voice of mingled wonderment and fear.

"I'll pay him back, be sure of that!" replied Elizabeth, who was by this time a blazing-eyed, scarlet-faced embodiment of fury, and had thrown off all reserve.

"Pay whom back?" tremblingly inquired Miss Sally, with vague apprehensions for the safety of old Mr. Valentine, who had so recently left her niece.

"Your charming captain, your gentleman rebel, your gallant soldier, your admirable Peyton, hang him!" cried Elizabeth.

"My Peyton? I only wish he was!" sighed the aunt, surprised into the confession by Elizabeth's own outspokenness.

"You're welcome to him, when I've had my revenge on him! Oh, aunt Sally, to think of it! He doesn't love me! He only pretended, so that I would save his life! But he shall see! I'll deliver him up to the troops, after all!"

"Oh, no!" said Miss Sally, deprecatingly. Great as was the news conveyed to her by Elizabeth's speech, she comprehended it, and adjusted her mind to it, in an instant, her absence of outward demonstration being due to the very bigness of the revelation, to which any possible outside show of surprise would be inadequate and hence useless. Moreover, Elizabeth gave no time for manifestations.

"No," the girl went on. "You are right. He's able-bodied now, and might be a match for all the servants. Besides, 'twould come out why I shielded him, and I should be the laugh o' the town. Oh, how shall I pay him? How shall I make him feel—ah! I know! I'll give him six for half a dozen! I'll make him love me, and then I'll cast him off and laugh at him!"

She was suddenly as jubilant at having hit on the project as if she had already accomplished it.

"Make him love you?" repeated her aunt, dubiously. Her aunt had her own reasons for doubting the possibility of such an achievement.

"Perhaps you think I can't!" cried Elizabeth. "Wait and see! But, heavens! He's going away,—he won't come back,—perhaps he's gone! No, there's his hat!" She ran and picked it up from the corner of the doorway. "He won't go without his hat. He'll have to come here for it. He went to his room for his sword. He'll be here at any moment."

And she paced the floor, holding the hat in one hand, and lapsing to the level of ordinary femininity as far as to adjust her hair with the other.

"You'll have to make quick work of it, Elizabeth, dear," said the aunt, with gentle irony, "if he's going to-night."

"I know, I know,—but I can't do it looking like this." She laid the hat on the table, in order to employ both hands in the arrangement of her hair. "If I only had on my satin gown! By the lord Harry, I have a mind—I will! When he comes in here, keep him till I return. Keep him as if your life depended on it." She went quickly towards the door of the east hall.

"But, Elizabeth!" cried Miss Sally, appalled. "Wait! How—"

"How?" echoed Elizabeth, turning near the door. "By hook or crook! You must think of a way! I have other things on my mind. Only keep him till I come back. If you let him go, I'll never speak to you again! And not a word to him of what I've told you! I sha'n't be long."

"But what are you going to do?" asked the aunt, despairingly.

"Going to arm myself for conquest! To put on my war-paint!" And the girl hastened through the doorway, crossed the hall, called Molly, and ran up-stairs to her room.

Miss Sally stood in the parlor, a prey to mingled feelings. She did not dare refuse the task thrown on her by her imperative niece. Not only her niece's anger would be incurred by the refusal, but also the niece's insinuations that the aunt was not sufficiently clever for the task. However difficult, the thing must be attempted. And, which made matters worse, even if the attempt should succeed, it would be a rewardless one to Miss Sally. If she might detain the captain for herself, the effort would be worth making. The aunt sighed deeply, shook her head distressfully, and then, reverting to a keen sense of Elizabeth's rage and ridicule in the event of failure, looked wildly around for some suggestion of means to hold the officer. Her eye alighted on the hat.

"He won't go without his hat, a night like this!" she thought. "I'll hide his hat."

She forthwith possessed herself of it, and explored the room for a hiding-place. She decided on one of the little narrow closets in either side of the doorway to the east hall, and started towards it, holding the hat at her right side. Before she had come within four feet of the chosen place, she heard the door from the south hall being thrown open, and, casting a swift glance over her left shoulder, saw the captain step across the threshold. She choked back her sensations, and gave inward thanks that the hat was hidden from his sight by herself. Peyton walked briskly towards the table.

Suddenly he stopped short, and turned his eyes from the table to Miss Sally, whose back was towards him.

"Ah, Miss Williams," said he, politely but hastily, "I left my hat here somewhere."

"Indeed?" said Miss Sally, amazed at her own unconsciousness, while she tried to moderate the beating of her heart. At the same moment, she turned and faced him, bringing the hat around behind her so that it should remain unseen.

Peyton looked from her to the spinet, thence to the sofa, thence back to the table.

"Yes, on the table, I thought. Perhaps—" He broke off here, and went to look on the mantel.

Miss Sally, who had never thought the captain handsomer, and who smarted under the sense of being deterred, by her niece's purpose, from employing this opportunity to fascinate him on her own account, continued to turn so as to face him in his every change of place.

"I don't see it anywhere," she said, with childlike innocence.

Peyton searched the mantel, then looked at the chairs, and again brought his eyes to bear on Miss Sally. She blinked once or twice, but did not quail.

"'Tis strange!" he said. "I'm sure I left it in this room."

And he went again over all the ground he had already examined. Miss Sally utilized the times when his back was turned, in making a search of her own, the object of which was a safe place where she could quickly deposit the hat without attracting his attention.

Peyton was doubly annoyed at this enforced delay in his departure, since Elizabeth might come into the parlor at any time, and the meeting occur which he had, for a moment, hoped to avoid.

"Would you mind helping me look for it?" said he. "I'm in great haste to be gone. Do me the kindness, madam, will you not?"

"Why, yes, with pleasure," she answered, thinking bitterly how transported she would be, in other circumstances, at such an opportunity of showing her readiness to oblige him.

Her aid consisted in following him about, looking in each place where he had looked the moment before, and keeping the sought-for object close behind her.

Suddenly he turned about, with such swiftness that she almost came into collision with him.

"It must have fallen to the floor," said he.

"Why, yes, we never thought of looking there, did we?" And she followed him through another tour of the room, turning her averted head from side to side in pretendedly ranging the floor with her eyes.

"I know," he said, with the elation of a new conjecture. "It must be behind something!"

Miss Sally gasped, but in an instant recovered herself sufficiently to say:

"Of course. It surely must be—behind something."

Harry went and looked behind the spinet, then examined the small spaces between other objects and the wall. This search was longer than any he had made before, as some of the pieces of furniture had to be moved slightly out of position.

Miss Sally felt her proximity to the object of this search becoming unendurable. She therefore profited by Peyton's present occupation to conduct pretended endeavors towards the closet west of the fireplace. She noiselessly opened one of the narrow doors, quickly tossed the hat inside, closed the door, and turned with ineffable relief towards Peyton.

To her consternation she found him looking at her.

"What are you doing there?" he asked.

"Why,—looking in this closet," she stammered, guiltily.

"Oh, no, it couldn't be in there," said Peyton, lightly. "But, yes. One of the servants might have laid it on the shelf." And he made for the closet.

"Oh, no!"

Miss Sally stood against the closet doors and held out her hands to ward him off.

"No harm to look," said he, passing around her and putting his hand on the door.

Miss Sally felt that, by remaining in the position of a physical obstacle to his opening the closet, she would betray all. Acting on the inspiration of the instant, she ran to the centre of the room, and cried:

"Oh, come away! Come here!" and essayed a well-meant, but feeble and abortive, scream.

"What's the matter?" asked Peyton, astonished.

"Oh, I'm going to faint!" she said, feigning a sinkiness of the knees and a floppiness of the head.

"Oh, pray don't faint!" cried Peyton, running to support her. "I haven't time. Let me call some one. Let me help you to the sofa."

By this time he held her in his arms, and was thinking her another sort of burden than Tom Jones found Sophia, or Clarissa was to Roderick Random.

The lady shrank with becoming and genuine modesty from the contact, gently repelled him with her hands, saying, "No, I'm better now,—but come," and took him by the arm to lead him further from the fatal closet.

But Peyton immediately released his arm.

"Ah, thank you for not fainting!" he said, with complete sincerity, and stalked directly back to the closet. Before she could think of a new device, he had opened the door, beheld the hat, and seized it in triumph. "By George, I was right! I bid you farewell, Miss Williams!" He very civilly saluted her with the hat, and turned towards the west door of the parlor.

Must, then, all her previous ingenuity be wasted? After having so far exerted herself, must she suffer the ignominious consequences of failure?

She ran to intercept him. Desperation gave her speed, and she reached the west door before he did. She closed it with a bang, and stood with her back against it. "No, no!" she cried. "You mustn't!"

"Mustn't what?" asked Peyton, surprised as much by her distracted eyes, panting nostrils, and heaving bosom, as by her act itself.

"Mustn't go out this way. Mustn't open this door," she answered, wildly.

He scrutinized her features, as if to test a sudden suspicion of madness. In a moment he threw off this conjecture as unlikely.

"But," said he, putting forth his hand to grasp the knob of the door.

"You mustn't, I say!" she cried. "I can't help it! Don't blame me for it! Don't ask me to explain, but you must not go out this way!"

She stood by her task now from a new motive, one that impelled more strongly than her fear of being reproached and derided by Elizabeth. Her own self-esteem was enlisted, and she was now determined not to incur her own reproach and derision. She perceived, too, with a sentimental woman's sense of the dramatic, that, though denied a drama of her own in which she might figure as heroine, here was, in another's drama, a scene entirely hers, and she was resolved to act it out with honor. Circumstances had not favored her with a romance, but here, in another's romance, was a chapter exclusively hers, a chapter, moreover, on whose proper termination the very continuation of the romance depended. So she would hold that door, at any cost.

Peyton regarded her for another moment of silence.

"Oh, well," said he, at last, "I can go the other way."

And, to her dismay, he strode towards the door of the east hall. She could not possibly outrun him thither. Her heart sank. The killing sense of failure benumbed her body. He was already at the door,—was about to open it. At that instant he stepped back into the parlor. In through the doorway, that he was about to traverse, came Elizabeth.



CHAPTER XI.

THE CONQUEST.

Miss Sally saw at a glance that her niece was dressed for conquest; then, with immense relief and supreme exultation, but with a feeling of exhaustion, knowing that her work was done, she silently left the room by the door she had guarded, closed it noiselessly behind her, and went up-stairs to restore her worked-out energies.

Elizabeth wore a blue satin gown, the one evening dress she had, in the possibility of a candle-light visit from the officers at the outpost, brought with her from New York. Her bare forearms, and the white surface surrounding the base of her neck, were thus for the first time displayed to Peyton's view. A pair of slender gold bracelets on her wrists set off the smoothness of her rounded arms, but she wore no other jewelry. She had not had the time or the facilities to have her hair built high as a grenadier's cap, but she looked none the less commanding. She was, indeed, a radiant creature. Peyton, having never before seen her at her present advantage, opened wide his eyes and stared at her with a wonder whose openness was excused only by the suddenness of the dazzling apparition.

She cast on him a momentary look of perfect indifference, as she might on any one that stood in her way; then walked lightly to the spinet, giving him a barely noticeable wide berth in passing, as if he were something with which it was probably desirable not to come in contact. Her slight deviation from a direct line of progress, though made inoffensively, struck him like a blow, yet did not interrupt, for more than an instant, his admiration. He stood dumbly looking after her, at her smooth and graceful movement, which had no sound but the rustling of skirts, her footfalls being noiseless in the satin slippers she wore.

Peyton was not now as impatient as he had been to depart. In fact, he lost, in some measure, his sense of being in the act of departure. What he felt was an inclination to look longer on this so unexpected vision. She sat down at the spinet with her back towards him, and somehow conveyed in her attitude that she thought him no longer in the room. He felt a necessity for establishing the fact of his presence.

"Pardon me for addressing you," he said, with a diffidence new to him, taking up the first pretext that came to mind, "but I fear your aunt requires looking to. She behaves strangely."

"Oh," said Elizabeth, lightly, too wise to give him the importance of pretending not to hear him, "she is subject to queer spells at times. I thought you had gone."

She began to play the spinet, very quietly and unobtrusively, with an absence of resentment, and with a seemingly unconscious indifference, that gave him a paralyzing sense of nothingness.

Unpleasant as this feeling made his position, he felt the situation become one from which it would be extremely awkward to flee. For the first time since certain boyhood fits of bashfulness, he now realized the aptness of that oft-read expression, "rooted to the spot." That he should be thrown into this trance-like embarrassment, this powerlessness of motion, this feeling of a schoolboy first introduced to society, of a player caught by stage fright, was intolerable.

When she had touched the keys gently a few times, he shook off something of the spell that bound him, and moved to a spot whence he could get a view of her face in profile. It had not an infinitesimal trace of the storm that had driven him from the room a short time before. It was entirely serene. There was on it no anger, no grief, no reproach of self or of another, no scorn. There was pride, but only the pride it normally wore; reserve, but only the reserve habitual to a high-born girl in the presence of any but her familiars. It was hard to believe her the woman who had been stirred to such tremendous wrath a few minutes ago, by the disclosure that she had been deceived, her love tricked and misplaced. Rather, it was hard to believe that the scene of wrath had ever occurred, that this woman had ever been so stirred by such cause, that she had ever loved him, that he had ever dared pretend love to her. The deception and the confession, with all they had elicited from her, seemed parts of a dream, of some fancy he had had, some romance he had read.

As for Elizabeth, she knew not, thought not, whether, in bearing him hot resentment, she still loved him. She knew only that she craved revenge, and that the first step towards her desired end was to assume that indifference which so puzzled, interested, and confounded him. A weak or a stupid woman would have shown a sense of injury, with flashes of anger. An ordinarily clever woman would have affected disdain, would have sniffed and looked haughty, would have overdone her pretended contempt. It is true, Elizabeth had moved slightly out of her way to pass further from him, but she had done this with apparent thoughtlessness, as if the act were dictated by some inner sense of his belonging to an inferior race; not with a visible intention of showing repulsion. It is true she had assumed ignorance of his presence, but she had given him to attribute this to a belief that he had left the room. When his voice declared his whereabouts, she treated him just as she would have treated any other indifferent person who was not quite her equal.

Peyton felt more and more uncomfortable. Would she continue playing the spinet forever, so perfectly at ease, so content not to look at him again, so assuming it for granted that, the operation of leave-taking being considered over between hostess and guest, the guest might properly be gone any moment without further attention on either side?

He began to fear that, if he did not soon speak, his voice would be beyond recovery. So, with a desperate resolve to recover his self-possession at a single coup, he blurted out, bunglingly:

"'Tis the first time I have seen you in that gown, madam."

Elizabeth, not ceasing to let her fingers ramble with soft touch over the keyboard, replied, carelessly:

"I have not worn it in some time."

Having found that he retained the power of speech, he proceeded to utter frankly his latest thought, concealing the slight bitterness of it with a pretence of playful, make-believe reproach:

"'Tis not flattering to me, that you never wore it while I was your guest, yet put it on the moment you thought I had departed."

She answered with good-humored lightness, "Why, sir, do you complain of not being flattered? I thought such complaints were made only by women, and only to their own hearts."

"If by flattery," said he, "you mean merited compliment, there are women who can never have occasion to complain of not receiving it."

"Indeed? When was that discovery made?"

"A minute ago, madam."

"Oh!" and she smiled with just such graciousness as a woman might show in accepting a compliment from a comparative stranger. "Thank you!"

"When I think of it," said he, "it seems strange that you—ah—never took pains to—eh—to appear at your best—nay, I should say, as your real self!—before me."

"Oh, you allude to my wearing this gown? Why, you must pardon my not having received you ceremoniously. Your visit began unexpectedly."

"Then somebody else is about to begin a visit that is expected?"

"Didn't you know? I thought all the house was aware Major Colden was to return in a week. He may be here to-night, though perhaps not till to-morrow."

"Confound that man!" This to himself, and then, to her: "I was of the impression you did not love him."

"Why, what gave you that impression?"

"No matter. It seems I was wrong."

"Oh, I don't say that,—or that you're right, either."

"However," quoth he, with an inward sigh of resignation, "it is for him that you are dressed as you never were for me!"

She did not choose to ask what reason had existed for considering him in selecting her attire. It was better not to notice his presumption, and she became more absorbed in her music.

Peyton strode up and down a few moments, then sat by the table, and rested his cheek on his hand, wearing a somewhat injured look.

"Major Colden, eh?" he mused. "To think I should come upon him again!" He essayed to renew conversation. "I trust, Miss Philipse, when I am gone—" But Elizabeth was now oblivious of surroundings; the notes from the spinet became louder, and she began to hum the air in a low, agreeable voice. Peyton looked hopeless. Presently he stood up again, watching her.

Elizabeth brought the piece to a lively finish, rose capriciously, took up the flowers she had laid on the spinet earlier in the evening, put them in her corsage, and made to readjust the bracelet on her right arm. In this attempt, she accidentally dropped the bracelet to the floor. Peyton ran to pick it up. But she quickly recovered it before he could reach it, put it on, walked to the table and sat down by it, removed the flowers from her bosom to the table, took up the volume of "The School for Scandal," and turned the leaves over as if in quest of a certain page.

While she was looking at the book, Peyton took up the flowers. Elizabeth, as if thinking they were still where she had laid them, put out her hand to repossess them, keeping her eyes the while on the book. For a moment, her hand ranged the table in search, then she abandoned the attempt to regain them.

Peyton held them out to her.

"No, I thank you," she said, laying down the book, and went back to the spinet.

"Ah, you give them to me!" cried Peyton, with sudden pleasure.

"Not at all! I merely do not wish to have them now."

"Oh," said he, thinking to make account by finding offence where none was really expressed, "has my touch contaminated them for you?"

"How can you talk so absurdly?" And she resumed her seat at the spinet, and her playing.

Peyton stood holding the flowers, looking at her, and presently heaved a deep sigh. This not moving her, he suddenly had an access of pride, brought himself together, and saying, with quick resolution, "I bid you good-night and good-by, madam," went rapidly towards the door of the east hall. But his resolution weakened when his hand touched the knob, and, to make pretext for further sight of her, he turned and went to go out the other door.

Elizabeth had had a moment of alarm at his first sign of departure, but had not betrayed the feeling. Now when, from her seat at the spinet, she saw him actually crossing the threshold near her, she called out, gently, "A moment, captain."

The pleased look on his face, as he turned towards her inquiringly, betrayed his gratification at being called back.

"You are taking my flowers away," she said, in explanation.

He plainly showed his disappointment. "Your pardon. My thoughtlessness. But you said you didn't wish to keep them." He laid them on the spinet.

"I do not,—yet a woman must allow very few hands to carry off flowers of her gathering."

She rose and took up the flowers and walked towards the fireplace.

"Then you at least take them back from my hands," said Peyton.

"Why, yes,—for this," and she tossed them into the fire.

He looked at them as they withered in the blaze, then said, "Have you any objection to my carrying away the ashes, Miss Philipse?"

She answered, considerately, "'Twill take you more time than you can lose, to gather them up."

"Oh, I am in no haste."

"Oh, then, I ask your pardon. A moment since, you were about to go."

"But now I prefer to stay."

"Indeed? May I ask the reason—but no matter."

But he felt that a reason ought to be forthcoming. "Why, you know, because—" And here he thought of one. "I wish to stay to meet Major Colden, of whom you say I am afraid. I shall prove to you at least I am no coward. After what you have said to me this night, I must in honor wait to face him."

"But it is late now. I don't think he will come till to-morrow."

"Then I can wait till to-morrow."

"But your duty calls you back to your own camp, now that your wound has healed."

"I think my wound has undergone a slight relapse. You shall see, at least, I am not afraid of your champion."

"If that is your only reason,—your desire to quarrel with Major Colden,—I cannot invite you to remain."

"Well, then, to tell the truth, there is another reason. When I said, a while since, I had never seen you in that gown, I used too many words. I should have said I had never really seen you at all."

"Where were your eyes?" she asked, absently, seeming to take his words literally and to perceive no compliment.

"I was in a kind of waking sleep."

"It has been a time and place of hallucinations, I think. I, too, sir, have been, since I came here a week ago, under the strangest spell. A kind of light madness or witchery was over me, and made me act ridiculously, against my very will. A week ago, when you were disabled, I intended to give you up to the British,—as I should do now, if it would not be so troublesome—"

"'Twould be troublesome to me, I assure you," he said, interrupting.

"But at the last moment," she went on, "I did precisely the reverse of what I wished. Awhile ago, in this room, I seemed to be in the possession of some evil spirit, which made me say preposterous things. I can only remember some wild raving I indulged in, and some undeserved rudeness I displayed towards you. But, will you believe, the instant you left me, I recovered my right mind. I am like one returned from bedlam, cured, and you will pardon any incivility I may have done you in my peculiar state, I'm sure, since you speak of having been curiously afflicted yourself."

"Then you mean," he faltered, "you did not really love me?"

"Why, certainly I did not! How could you think I did? Something possessed my will. But, thank heaven, I am myself again. Why, sir, how could I? You know very little of me, sir, to think—Oh!" She covered her face with her hands. "What things must I have said and done, in my clouded state, to make you think that! You,—an enemy, a rebel, a person whose only possible interest to me arises from his enmity!"

Dazzled as he was by her newly discovered beauty, the imposition on him was complete. He saw this covetable being now indifferent to him, out of his power to possess, likely soon to pass into the possession of another.

"Pray try to forget awhile that enmity," he supplicated.

"I shall try, and then you can have no interest for me at all."

"Then don't try, I beg. I'd rather have an interest for you as an enemy than not at all."

"Why, really, sir—" She seemed half puzzled, half amused.

"Lord," quoth he, "how I have been deluded! I thought my love-making that night, feigned though it was, had wakened a response."

"Love-making, do you say? Will you believe me, sir, I don't remember what passed here that night, save the unaccountable ending,—my making you my guest instead of their prisoner."

"I wish you were pretending all this!"

"Why, if 'twould make you happier that I were, I wish so, too."

"How can you speak so lightly of such matters?"

"What matters?"

"Love, of course."

"Why, do men alone, because they laugh at women for taking love seriously, have the right to take it lightly? And of what love am I speaking lightly,—the love you say you feigned for me, or the love you say you thought you had awakened in me?"

"The love I vow I do not feign for you! The love I wish I could awaken in you!"

"Why, captain, what a change has come over you!"

"Yes. I have risen from my sleep. If you, in waking from yours, put off love, I, in waking from mine, took on love!"

She smiled, as with amusement. "A somewhat speedy taking on, I should say."

"Love's born of a glance, I say!"

"Haven't I heard that before?" reflectively.

"Aye, for I said it here when I did not mean it, and now I say it again when I do!"

"And of what particular glance am I to suppose—"

"Of the first glance I cast on you when you entered this room in that gown. Yes, born of a glance—"

"Born of a gown, in that case, don't you mean?" derisively.

"Of a gown, or a glance, or a what you wish."

"I don't wish it should be born at all."

"You don't wish I should love you?"

"I don't wish you should love me or shouldn't love me. I don't wish you—anything. Why should I wish anything of one who is nothing to me?"

"Nothing to you! I would you were to me what I am to you!"

"What is that, pray?"

"An adorer!"

"You are a—very amusing gentleman."

"You refuse me a glimpse of hope?"

"You would like to have it as a trophy, I suppose. You men treasure the memories of your little conquests over foolish women, as an Indian treasures the scalps he takes."

"Lord! which sex, I wonder, has the busier scalping-knife?"

"I can't speak for all my sex. Some of us seek no scalps—"

"You don't have to. I make you a present of mine. I fling it at your feet."

"We seek no scalps, I say,—because we don't value them a finger-snap." And she gave a specimen of the kind of finger-snap she did not value them at.

"In heaven's name," he said, "say what you do value, that I may strive to become like it! What do you value, I implore you, tell me?"

"Oh,—my studies, for one thing,—my French and my music,—"

"Could I but translate myself into French, or set myself to an air!"

"Nay, I don't care for comic songs!"

"I see you like flowers. If I might die, and be buried in your garden, and grow up in the shape of a rose-bush—"

"Or a cabbage!"

"I fear you don't like that flower."

"Better come up in the form of your own Virginia tobacco."

"And be smoked by old Mr. Valentine? No, you don't like tobacco. Ah, Miss Philipse, this levity is far from the mood of my heart!"

"Why do you indulge in it, then?"

"I? Is it I who indulge in levity?"

"Assuredly, I do not!" Oh, woman's privilege of saying unabashedly the thing which is not!

"No," said he, "for there's no levity in the coldness with which beauty views the wounds it makes."

"I'm sure one is not compelled to offer oneself to its wounds."

"No,—nor the moth to seek the flame."

"La, now you are a moth,—a moment ago, a rose-bush,—"

"And you are ten million roses, grown in the garden of heaven, and fashioned into one body there, by some celestial Praxiteles!"

"Dear me, am I all that?"

"Ay," he said, sadly, "and no more truly conscious of what it means to be all that, than any rose in any garden is conscious of what its beauty means!"

"Perhaps," she said, softly, feeling for a moment almost tenderness enough to abandon her purpose, "more conscious than you think!"

"Ah! Then you are not like common beauties,—as poor and dull within as they are rich and radiant without? You but pretend insensibility, to hide real feeling."

"I did not say so," she answered, lightly, bracing herself again to her resolution.

"But it is so, is it not?" he went on. "Your heart and mind are as roseate and delicate as your face? You can understand my praises and my feelings? You can value such love as mine aright, and know 'tis worthy some repayment?"

But she was not again to be duped by low-spoken, fervid words, or by wistful, glowing eyes. She must be sure of him.

"I know,—I recall now," she said, with little apparent interest; "you spoke of love a week ago, with no less eloquence and ardor."

"More eloquence and ardor, I dare say, for then I did not feel love. Then my tongue was not tied by sense of a passion it could not hope to express one hundredth part of! And, even if my tongue had gift to tell my heart, I should not dare trust myself under the sway of my feelings. But I do love you now,—I do,—I do!"