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.