In another instant bugles were ringing through the camp, with the hurrying hoofs of mounted officers and the trampling of forming men.  The house itself was almost deserted.  Although the single cannon-shot had been enough to show that it was no mere skirmishing of pickets, Brant still did not believe in any serious attack of the enemy.  His position, as in the previous engagement, had no strategic importance to them; they were no doubt only making a feint against it to conceal some advance upon the centre of the army two miles away.  Satisfied that he was in easy supporting distance of his division commander, he extended his line along the ridge, ready to fall back in that direction, while retarding their advance and masking the position of his own chief.  He gave a few orders necessary to the probable abandonment of the house, and then returned to it.  Shot and shell were already dropping in the field below.  A thin ridge of blue haze showed the line of skirmish fire.  A small conical, white cloud, like a bursting cotton-pod, revealed an open battery in the willow-fringed meadow.  Yet the pastoral peacefulness of the house was unchanged.  The afternoon sun lay softly on its deep verandas; the pot pourri incense of fallen rose-leaves haunted it still.

He entered his room through the French window on the veranda, when the door leading from the passage was suddenly flung open, and Miss Faulkner swept quickly inside, closed the door behind her, and leaned back against it, panting and breathless.

Clarence was startled, and for a moment ashamed.  He had suddenly realized that in the excitement he had entirely forgotten her and the dangers to which she might be exposed.  She had probably heard the firing, her womanly fears had been awakened; she had come to him for protection.  But as he turned towards her with a reassuring smile, he was shocked to see that her agitation and pallor were far beyond any physical cause.  She motioned him desperately to shut the window by which he had entered, and said, with white lips,—­

“I must speak with you alone!”

“Certainly.  But there is no immediate danger to you even here—­and I can soon put you beyond the reach of any possible harm.”

“Harm—­to me!  God! if it were only that!”

He stared at her uneasily.

“Listen,” she said gaspingly, “listen to me!  Then hate, despise me—­kill me if you will.  For you are betrayed and ruined—­cut off and surrounded!  It has been helped on by me, but I swear to you the blow did not come from my hand.  I would have saved you.  God only knows how it happened—­it was Fate!”

In an instant Brant saw the whole truth instinctively and clearly.  But with the revelation came the usual calmness and perfect self-possession which never yet had failed him in any emergency.  With the sound of the increasing cannonade and its shifting position made clearer to his ears, the view of his whole threatened position spread out like a map before his eyes, the swift calculation of the time his men could hold the ridge in his mind—­even a hurried estimate of the precious moments he could give to the wretched woman before him—­he even then, gravely and gently, led her to a chair and said in a calm voice,—­