“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 181 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 182 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 183 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 184 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 185 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 187 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 188 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 190 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 191 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, 192 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 193 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 195 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 196 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.