And when I reached Drake Hill a white curtain fluttered athwart a window, and I caught a gleam of a white arm pulling it to place, and knew that Mistress Mary had been watching for me—­I can not say with what rapture and triumph and misgivings.

It was well toward morning, and indeed a faint pallor of dawn was in the east, and now and then a bird was waking.  Not a slave on the plantation was astir, and the sounds of slumber were coming from the quarters.  So I myself put my borrowed horse in stable, and then was seeking my own room, when, passing through the hall, a white figure started forth from a shadow and caught me by the arm, and it was Catherine Cavendish.  She urged me forth to the porch, I being bewildered and knowing not how, nor indeed if it were wise, to resist her.  But when we stood together there, in that hush of slumber only broken now and then by the waking love of a bird, and it seemed verily as if we two were alone in the whole world, a sense of the situation flashed upon me.  I turned on my heel to reenter the house.  “Madam,” I said, “this will never do.  If you remain here with me, your reputation—­”

“What think you I care for my reputation?” she whispered.  “What think you?  Harry Wingfield, you cannot do this monstrous thing.  You cannot be so lost to all honour as to let my sister—­You cannot, and you a convict—­”

Then, indeed, for the first time in my life and the last I answered a woman as if she were a man, and on an equal footing of antagonism with me.  “Madam,” I replied, “I will maintain my honour against your own.”  But she seemed to make no account of what I said.  Indeed I have often wondered whether a woman, when she is in pursuit of any given end, can progress by other methods than an ant, which hath no power of circuitousness, and will climb over a tree with long labour and pain rather than skirt it, if it come in her way.  Straight at her purpose she went.  “Harry, Harry,” she said, still in that sharp whisper, “you will not, you cannot—­she is but a child.”

Before I could reply, out ran Mary Cavendish herself, and was close at my side, turning an angry face upon her sister.

“Catherine,” she cried out, “how dare you?  I am no child.  Think you that I do not know my own mind?  How dare you?  You shall not come between Harry and me!  I am his before the whole world.  I will not have it, Catherine!”

Then Catherine Cavendish, awakening such bewilderment and dismay in me as I had never felt, looked at her sister, and said in a voice which I can hear yet:  “Have thy way then, sister; but ’tis over thy own sister’s heart.”

“What mean you?” Mary asked breathlessly.

“I love him!” said Catherine.

I felt the hot blood mount to my head, and I knew what shame was.  I turned to retreat.  I knew not what to do, but Mary’s voice stopped me.  It rang out clear and pitiless, with that pitilessness of a great love.