Hampton welcomed him with distant but marked courtesy, having evidently thought out his own immediate plan of action, and schooled himself accordingly.  Standing there, the bright light streaming over them from the open windows, they presented two widely contrasting personalities, yet each exhibiting in figure and face the evidences of hard training and iron discipline.  Hampton was clothed in black, standing straight as an arrow, his shoulders squared, his head held proudly erect, while his cool gray eyes studied the face of the other as he had been accustomed to survey his opponents at the card-table.  Brant looked the picture of a soldier on duty, trim, well built, erect, his resolute blue eyes never flinching from the steady gaze bent upon ham, his bronzed young face grave from the seriousness of his mission.  Neither was a man to temporize, to mince words, or to withhold blows; yet each instinctively felt that this was an occasion rather for self-restraint.  In both minds the same thought lingered—­the vague wonder how much the other knew.  The elder man, however, retained the better self-control, and was first to break the silence.

“Miss Gillis informed me of your kindness to her last evening,” he said, quietly, “and in her behalf I sincerely thank you.  Permit me to offer you a chair.”

Brant accepted it, and sat down, feeling the calm tone of proprietorship in the words of the other as if they had been a blow.  His face flushed, yet he spoke firmly.  “Possibly I misconstrue your meaning,” he said, with some bluntness, determined to reach the gist of the matter at once.  “Did Miss Gillis authorize you to thank me for these courtesies?”

Hampton smiled with provoking calmness, holding an unlighted cigar between his fingers.  “Why, really, as to that I do not remember.  I merely mentioned it as expressing the natural gratitude of us both.”

“You speak as if you possessed full authority to express her mind as well as your own.”

The other bowed gravely, his face impassive.  “My words would quite naturally bear some such construction.”

The officer hesitated, feeling more doubtful than ever regarding his own position.  Chagrined, disarmed, he felt like a prisoner standing bound before his mocking captor.  “Then I fear my mission here is useless.”

“Entirely so, if you come for the purpose I suspect,” said Hampton, sitting erect in his chair, and speaking with more rapid utterance.  “To lecture me on morality, and demand my yielding up all influence over this girl,—­such a mission is assured of failure.  I have listened with some degree of calmness in this room already to one such address, and surrendered to its reasoning.  But permit me to say quite plainly, Lieutenant Brant, that you are not the person from whom I will quietly listen to another.”

“I had very little expectation that you would.”

“You should have had still less, and remained away entirely.  However, now that you are here, and the subject broached, it becomes my turn to say something, and to say it clearly.  It seems to me you would exhibit far better taste and discrimination if from now on you would cease forcing your attentions upon Miss Gillis.”