The silence of her entrance was from her having, a few minutes earlier, exchanged her riding-boots for satin slippers.

“I—I thank you for coming, madam,” said Peyton, feeling the necessity of a prompt reply to her imperious look of inquiry, yet without a practicable idea in his head. “I had—that is—a request to make.”

He was trembling violently, not from fear, but from that kind of agitation which often precedes the undertaking of a critical task, as when a suppliant awaits an important interview, or an actor assumes for the first time a new part.

“Mr. Valentine said a confession,” said Elizabeth, holding him in a coldly resentful gaze.

“Why, yes, a confession,” said he, hopelessly.

“A plot to disclose,” she added, with sharp impatience. “What is it?”

“You shall hear,” he began, in gloomy desperation, without the faintest knowledge of how he should 141 finish. “I—ah—it is this—” His wandering glance fell on the table and the writing materials she had left there. “I wish to write a letter—a last letter—to a friend.” The vague general outline of a project arose in his mind.

Elizabeth was inclined to be as laconic as implacable. “Write it,” said she. “There are pen and ink.”

“But I can’t write in this position,” said Peyton, quickly, lest she might leave the room. “I fear I can’t even hold a pen. Will you not write for me?”

“I? Secretary to a horse-thieving rebel!”

“It is a last request, madam. A last request is sacred,—even an enemy’s.”

“I will send in some one to write for you.” And she turned to go.

“But this letter will contain secrets.”

“Secrets?” The very word is a charm to a woman. Elizabeth’s curiosity was touched but slightly, yet sufficiently to stay her steps for the moment.

“Ay,” said Peyton, lowering his tone and speaking quickly, “secrets not for every ear. Secrets of the heart, madam,—secrets so delicate that, to convey them truly, I need the aid of more than common tact and understanding.”

He watched her eagerly, and tried to repress the signs of his anxiety.

Elizabeth considered for a moment, then went to the table and sat down by it.

“But,” said she, regarding him with angry suspicion, “the confession,—the plot?”

“Why, madam,” said he, his heart hammering forcefully, “do you think I may communicate them to you directly? The letter shall relate them, too, and if the person who holds the pen for me pays heed to the letter’s contents, is it my fault?”

“I understand,” said the woman, entrapped, and she dipped the quill into the ink.

“The letter,” began Peyton, slowly, hesitating for ideas, and glancing at the clock, yet not retaining a sense of where the hands were, “is to Mr. Bryan Fairfax—”

“What?” she interrupted. “Kinsman to Lord Fairfax, of Virginia?”

“There’s but one Mr. Bryan Fairfax,” said Peyton, acquiring confidence from his preliminary expedient to overcome prejudice, “and, though he’s on the side of King George in feeling, yet he’s my friend,—a circumstance that should convince even you I’m not scum o’ the earth, rebel though you call me. He’s the friend of Washington, too.”

“Poh! Who is your Washington? My aunt Mary rejected him, and married his rival in this very room!”

“And a good thing Washington didn’t marry 143 her!” said Peyton, gallantly. “She’d have tried to turn him Tory, and the ladies of this family are not to be resisted.”

“Go on with your letter,” said Elizabeth, chillingly.

“‘Mr. Bryan Fairfax,’” dictated Peyton, steadying his voice with an effort, “‘Towlston Hall, Fairfax County, Virginia. My dear Fairfax: If ever these reach you, ’twill be from out a captivity destined, probably, to end soon in that which all dread, yet to which all must come; a captivity, nevertheless, sweetened by the divinest presence that ever bore the name of woman—’”

Elizabeth stopped writing, and looked up, with an astonishment so all-possessing that it left no room even for indignation.

Peyton, his eyes astray in the preoccupation of composition, did not notice her look, but, as if moved by enthusiasm, rose on his right leg and stood, his hands placed on the back of the light chair by the sofa, the chair’s front being turned from him. He went on, with an affectation of repressed rapture: “‘’Twere worth even death to be for a short hour the prisoner of so superb—’”

“Sir, what are you saying?” And Elizabeth dropped the pen, and stood up, regarding him with freezing resentment.

“My thoughts, madam,” said he, humbly, meeting her gaze.

“How dare you jest with me?” said she.

“Jest? Does a man jest in the face of his own death?”

“’Twas a jest to bid me write such lies!”

“Lies? ’Fore gad, the mirror yonder will not call them lies!” He indicated the oblong glass set in above the mantel. “If there is lying, ’tis my eyes that lie! ’Tis only what they tell me, that my lips report.”

Keeping his left foot slightly raised from the floor, he pushed the chair a little towards her, and himself followed it, resting his weight partly on its back, while he hopped with his right foot. But Elizabeth stayed him with a gesture of much imperiousness.

“What has such rubbish to do with your confession and your plot?” she demanded.

“Can you not see?” And he now let some of his real agitation appear, that it might serve as the lover’s perturbation which it would be well to display.

“My confession is of the instant yielding of my heart to the charms of a goddess.”

In those days lovers, real or pretended, still talked of goddesses, flames, darts, and such.

“Who desired your heart to yield to anything?” was Miss Elizabeth’s sharply spoken reply.

“Beauty commanded it, madam!” said he, bowing low over his chair-back.

“So, then, there was no plot?” Her eyes flashed with indignation.

“A plot, yes!” He glanced sidewise at the clock, and drew self-reliance from the very situation, which began to intoxicate him. “My plot, to attract you hither, by that message, that I might console myself for my fate by the joy of seeing you!”

“The joy of seeing me!” She spoke with incredulity and contempt.

A glad boldness had come over Peyton. He felt himself masterful, as one feels who is drunk with wine; yet, unlike such a one, he had command of mind and body.

“Ay, joy,” said he, “joy none the less that you are disdainful! Pride is the attribute of queens, and tenderness is not the only mood in which a woman may conquer. Heaven! You can so discomfit a man with your frowns, what might you do with your smile!”

He felt now that he could dissimulate to fool the very devil.

But Elizabeth, though interested as one may be in an oddity, seemed not otherwise impressed. ’Twas something, however, that she remained in the room to answer:

“I do not know what I have done with my frown, nor what I might do with my smile, but, whatever it be, you are not like to see!”

“That I know,” said Peyton, and added, at a reckless venture, “and am consoled, when I consider that no other man has seen!”

“How do you know that?”

“Your smile is not for any common man, and I’ll wager your heart is as whole as your beauty.”

She looked at him for a moment of silence, then:

“I cannot imagine why you say all this,” quoth she, in real puzzlement.

“’Tis an easing to the tortured heart to reveal itself,” he answered, “as one would fain uncover an inner wound, though there be no hope of cure. I can go the calmer to my doom for having at least given outlet in words to the flame kindled in a moment within me. My doom! Yes, and none so unwelcome, either, if by it I escape a lifetime of vain longing!”

“Your talk is incomprehensible, sir. If you are serious, it must be that your head is turned.”

“My head is turned, doubtless, but by you!”

He was now assuming the low, quick, nervous utterance that is often associated with intense repressed feeling; and his words were accompanied by his best possible counterfeit of the burning, piercing, distraught gaze of passion. Though he acted a part, it was not with the cold-blooded art of a mimic who simulates by rule; it was with the animation due to imagining himself actually swayed by the feeling he 147 would feign. While he knew his emotion to be fictitious, he felt it as if it were real, and his consequent actions were the same as if real it were.

“I’m sure the act was not intentional with me,” said Elizabeth. “I’d best leave you, lest you grow worse.” And she moved towards the door.

Peyton had rapid work of it, pushing the chair before him and hopping after it, so as to intercept her. In the excitement of the moment, he lost his mastery of himself.

“But you must not go! Hear me, I beg! Good God, only a half hour left!”

“A half hour?” repeated Elizabeth, inquiringly.

“I mean,” said Peyton, recovering his wits, “a half hour till the troops may be here for me,—only a half hour until I must leave your house forever! Do not let me be deprived of the sight of you for those last minutes! Tis so short a time, yet ’tis all my life!”

“The man is mad, I think!” She spoke as if to herself.

“Mad!” he echoed. “Yes, some do call it a madness—the love that’s born of a glance, and lasts till death!”

“Love!” said she. “’Tis impossible you should come to love me, in so short a time.”

“’Tis born of a glance, I tell you!” he cried. “What is it, if not love, that makes me forget my 148 coming death, see only you, hear only you, think of only you? Why do I not spend this time, this last hour, in pleading for my life, in begging you to hide me and send the troops away without me when they come? They would take your word, and you are a woman, and women are moved by pleading. Why, then, do I not, in the brief time I have left, beg for my life? Because my passion blinds me to all else, because I would use every moment in pouring out my heart to you, because my feelings must have outlet in words, because it is more than life or death to me that you should know I love you!—God, how fast that clock goes!”

She had stood in wonderment, under the spell of his vehemence. Now, as he leaned towards her, over the chair-back, his breath coming rapidly, his eyes luminous, she seemed for a moment abashed, softened, subdued. But she put to flight his momentary hope by starting again for the doorway, with a low-spoken, “I must go!”

But he thrust his chair in her way.

“Nay, don’t go!” he said. “You may hear my avowal with propriety. My people are as good as any in Virginia.”

She stood regarding him with a look of scrutiny.

“You are a rebel against your king,” she said, but not harshly.

“Is not the King soon to have his revenge? 149 And is that a reason why you should leave me now?”

“You deserted your first colors.”

“’Twas in extraordinary circumstances, and in the right cause. And is that a reason why you—”

“You took my horse.”

“But paid you for it, and you have your horse again. Abuse me, madam, but do not go from me. Call me rebel, deserter, robber, what you will, but remain with me. Denunciation from your lips is sweeter than praise from others. Chastise me, strike me, trample on me,—I shall worship you none the less!”

He inclined his body further forward over the chair-back, and thus was very near her. She put out her hand to repel him. He moved back with humility, but took her hand and kissed it, with an appearance of passion qualified by reverence.

“How dare you touch my hand?” And she quickly drew it from him.

“A poor wretch who loves, and is soon to die, dares much!”

“You seem resigned to dying,” she remarked.

“Have I not said ’tis better than living with a hopeless passion?”

“And yet death,” she said, “that kind of a death is not pleasant.”

“I’m not afraid of it,” said he, wondering how the 150 minutes were running, yet not daring the loss of time to look. “’Tis not in consigning me to the enemy that you have your revenge on me, ’tis in making me vainly love you. I receive the greater hurt from your beauty, not from the British provost-marshal!”

“Bravado!” said she.

“Time will show,” said he.

“If you are so strong a man that you can endure the one hurt so calmly, why are you not a little stronger,—strong enough to ignore this other hurt,—this love-wound, as you call it?”

She blushed furiously, and much against her will, at the mere word, “love-wound.” Her mood now seemed to be one of pretended incredulity, and yet of a vague unwillingness that the man should be so weak to her charms.

Peyton conceived that a change of play might aid his game.

“By heaven,” he cried, “I will! ’Tis a weakness, as you imply! I shall close my heart, vanquish my feelings! No word more of love! I defy your beauty, your proud face, your splendid eyes! I shall die free of your image. Go where you will, madam. It sha’n’t be a puling lover that the British hang. A snap o’ the finger for your all-conquering charms!—why do you not leave me?”

“What! Do you order me from my own parlor?”

Hope accelerated Peyton’s heart at this, but he feigned indifference.

“Go or stay,” he said; “’tis nothing to me!”

“You rebel, you speak like that to me!”

Her speech rang with genuine anger, and of a little hotter quality than he had thought to raise.

He was about to answer, when suddenly a sound, far and faint, reached his ear. “Isn’t that—do you hear—” he said, huskily, and turning cold.

“Horses?” said Elizabeth. “Yes,—on the road from King’s Bridge.”

She went to one of the eastern windows, opened the sash, unfastened the shutter without, and let in a rush of cold air. Then she closed the sash and looked out through the small panes.

“Is it—” said Peyton, quietly, with as much steadiness as he could command, “I wonder—can it be—”

“A troop of rangers!” said Elizabeth. “And Sam is with them!” She closed the shutter, and turned to Peyton, her face still glowing with the resentment elicited by the cavalier attitude he had assumed before this alarm. “Go or stay, ’tis nothing to you, you said! The last insult, Sir Rebel Captain!” and she made for the door.

“You mustn’t go! You mustn’t go!” was the only speech he could summon. But she was already passing him. He snatched a kerchief from her dress, 152 and dropped it on the floor. She did not observe his act. “Pardon me!” he cried. “Your kerchief! You’ve dropped it, don’t you see?”

She turned and saw it on the floor.

Peyton quickly stepped from behind his chair, stooped and picked up the kerchief, kissed it, and handed it to her, then staggered to his former support, showing in his face and by a groan the pain caused him by his movement.

“Your wound!” said Elizabeth, standing still. “You shouldn’t have stooped!”

Harry’s pain and consequent weakness, added to his consciousness of the rapidly approaching enemy, who had already turned in from the main road, gave him a pallor that would have claimed the attention of a less compassionate woman even than Elizabeth.

“No matter!” he murmured, feebly. Then, as if about to swoon, he threw his head back, lost his hold of the chair-back, and staggered to the spinet. Leaning on this, he gasped, “My cravat! I feel as if I were choking!” and made some futile effort with his hand to unfasten the neck-cloth. “Would you,” he panted, “may I beg—loosen it?”

She went to his side, undid the cravat, and otherwise relieved his neck of its confinement. She could not but meet his gaze as she did so. It was a gaze of eager, adoring eyes. He feebly smiled his thanks, 153 and spoke, between short breaths, the words, “The hour—I love you—yes, the troops!”

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 155 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.