By and by, as she turns it over for the twentieth time, she says aloud to herself:  “To think that it should be given to me to do,—­made my duty!  Uncle Jeffrey taught me that, as he has taught me many things these past months,—­to keep my own counsel, for one thing.

“Ah, Uncle Jeffrey, you have fancied me all these months naught but a vain little puppet who could be led to forget anything in a round of routs and balls.  Well, I like the routs and balls dearly, dearly, but I like something else better.  I like what my father has taught us, what my dear Eph is going to fight for, and perhaps die for, far, far better.  Yet I felt like a cheat to-night as I led Sir Harry on to tell me what he did,—­Sir Harry, who thinks me, as all the rest do, a stanch little Tory, for I have kept my counsel indeed, and no one suspects.  But oh, it is odious, it is odious, this war business; yet I have been taught how to do my duty, and I have done it.  Yes, I have done my duty, for ’the reporting of important facts, however gained, in times of war, is part of war tactics.’  Yes, these are your words, Uncle Jeffrey, and oh, how they flashed up to me to-night when Sir Harry told me of the British vessel, and how they fairly rung in my ears like an order, when it suddenly came to me how I could get this important fact that I had gained sent to the right quarter by means of good Anthony Styles and that parcel-box of his, through which so many messages have gone safely.

“Oh, I could laugh, I could laugh, if I didn’t shiver so, when I think of it!  Sir Harry, Sir Harry of all persons, dropping that message into Anthony Styles’s hands,—­Anthony Styles, the stanch rebel whom they think a stanch Tory!  Oh, I could laugh, I could laugh!  And now if everything goes well,—­if everything goes well, my dear rebels will not be swept off the earth by British arms quite yet!

[Illustration:  Sibyl’s reflections]

“But, hark! that is the clock; it is striking one, and I out of bed and gabbling to myself in this foolish way of mine, ’like a play-acting woman,’ as Uncle Jeffrey would say of me.  But I will not stay up a minute longer.  So good-night, good-night, my dear rebels, g—­ood-night!”

* * * * *

The clock was striking four the next afternoon when a weather-beaten man, who had a look as if he had once been a seaman, knocked at the side door of Mr. Jeffrey Merridew’s mansion and asked to see young Mistress Merridew.

“It’s Shoemaker Styles,” the maid informed Sibyl, “and he says you must come down and try on the slipper he has brought; he’s not sure about the heel.  He’s in the hall-room, mem.”

It was with a wildly beating heart that Sibyl, obeying this summons, ran down to the little hall-room where Anthony Styles awaited her.

He stood with the slipper in his hand as she entered the room; and before he could close the door behind her, he called out in a frank, loud voice:  “I thought you had better try on the shoe, miss; I wasn’t sure of the heel.”