“You didn’t ask her, of course?”

“No.  But I knocked at her chamber door, and getting no answer I went down-stairs again.  This time she was in the parlour.  She had been in the library before, it seemed; ’twas warmer there.”

But, as I narrowly watched the poor lad, I questioned whether he was really convinced that she had been in the library before.  He had said nothing of Captain Falconer’s sitting-room, of which the door was that of the transformed large parlour, and was directly across the hall from the Faringfields’ ordinary parlour, wherein Tom had first sought and eventually found her.

’Twas our practice thus to ride back to our posts when we had been off duty, although our rank did not allow us to go mounted in the service.  For despite the needs of the army, the Faringfields and I contrived to retain our horses for private use.  All of that family were good riders, particularly Margaret.  She often rode out for a morning’s canter, going alone because it was her will thereto, which was not opposed, for she had so accustomed us to her aloofness that solitary excursions seemed in place with her.  One day, a little later in that same December, Tom and I had taken the road by way of General De Lancey’s country mansion at Bloomingdale, rather than our usual course, which lay past the Murray house of Incledon.  As I rode Northward at a slow walk, some distance ahead of my comrade, I distinctly heard through a thicket that veiled the road from a little glade at the right, the voice of Captain Falconer, saying playfully: 

“Nay, how can you doubt me?  Would not gratitude alone, for the reparation of my fortunes, bind me as your slave, if you had not chains more powerful?”

And then I caught this answer, in a voice that gave me a start, and sent the blood into my face—­the voice of Margaret: 

“But will those chains hold, if this design upon your gratitude fail?”

She spoke as in jest, but with a perceptible undercurrent of earnestness.  This was a new attitude for her, and what a revelation to me!  In a flash I saw her infatuation for this fine fellow, some fear of losing him, a pursuit of some plan by which she might repair his fortunes and so bind him by obligation.  Had Margaret, the invincible, the disdainful, fallen to so abject a posture?  And how long had these secret meetings been going on?

There was new-fallen snow upon the road, and this had deadened the sound of our horses’ feet to those beyond the thicket.  Tom was not yet so near as to have heard their voices.  I saw the desirability of his remaining in ignorance for the present, so I uttered a loud “chuck,” and gave a pull at my reins, as if urging my horse to a better gait, my purpose being to warn the speakers of unseen passers-by ere Tom should come up.  I had not let my horse come to a stop, nor had I otherwise betrayed my discovery.