“What made you mad, Monsieur John?”

“’Twas his threat to me—­to taint me with my father’s outlawry.  Do you greatly blame me, Margery?”

“No.”

Thereat a silence came and sat between us, and I fell to loving her the more because of it; but when she spoke I always loved her more for speaking.

“My father has had little peace since coming here,” she said, at length.  “He is old and none too well; and as for king and Congress, asks nothing but his right to hold aloof.  And this they will not give him.”

Remembering what Jennifer had told me of Gilbert Stair’s trimming, I smiled within.

“That is the way of all the world in war-time, ma petite.  A partizan may suffer once for all, but both sides hold a neutral lawful prey.”

’Twas as the spark to tinder; my word the spark and in her eyes the answering flash.

“I tell him so!” she cried.  “I tell him always that the king will have his own again.  But still he halts and hesitates; and when these rebels come and quarter on us—­”

I fear she must have seen my inward smile this time, for she broke off in the midst, and I made haste to forestall her flying out at me.

“Oh, come, my dear; you should not be so fierce with him when you yourself have brought a rebel to his house to nurse alive.”

She looked me fairly in the eye.  “You should be the last to remind me of my treason, Monsieur John.”

“Then you are free to call it treason, are you, Margery?” I said.

She looked away from me again.  “How can it well be less than treason?” Then suddenly she turned and clasped her hands upon my knee.  “You must not be too hard upon me, Monsieur John.  I’ve tried to do my duty as I saw it, and I have asked no questions.  And yet I know much more than you have told me.”

“What do you know?”

“I know your wound has been your safety.  If you should leave this room and house to-day you would never wear the buff and blue again, Captain Ireton.”

“You mean they would hang me for a spy.  Will you believe me, Margery, if I say I have not yet worn the buff and blue at all?”

“Oh!” The little exclamation was of pure delight.  “Then they were all mistaken?  You are no rebel, after all?”

Was ever man so tempted since the fall of Adam?  As I have writ it down for you in measured words, I was no more than half a patriot at this time.  And love has made more traitors than its opposites of lust or greed.  In no uncertain sense I was a man without a country; and this fair maiden on the hassock at my feet was all the world to me.  I saw in briefer time than any clock hands ever measured how much a yielding word might do for me; and then I thought of Richard Jennifer and was myself again.

“Nay, little one,” I said; “there has been no mistake.  For their own purposes my enemies have passed the word that I am here as the Baron de Kalb’s paid spy.  That is no mistake; ’tis a lie cut out of whole cloth.  I came here straight from New Berne, and back of that from London and the Continent, and scarcely know the buff and blue by sight.  But I am Carolina born, dear lady; and this King George’s governor hanged my father.  So, when God gives me strength to mount and ride—­”