“Bring her to me when I am alone,” whispered Betty Bleecker, with a very friendly smile.  “And let the others believe that you stand for nothing in this affair.”

And so I went away, thinking of many things—­ too many and too perplexing, perhaps, for the intellect of a very young man deeply in love—­ a man who knows he is in love, and yet remains incredulous that it is indeed love which so utterly bewilders and afflicts him.

CHAPTER IX

 Mid-summer

Since our arrival from Westchester the weather had been more or less unsettled—­ fog, rain, chilling winds alternating with days of midsummer heat.  But now the exhausting temperature of July remained constant; fiery days of sunshine were succeeded by nights so hot and suffocating that life seemed well-nigh insupportable under tents or in barracks, and officers and men, almost naked, lay panting along the river bank through the dreadful hours of darkness which brought no relief from the fiery furnace of the day.

Schott’s riflemen mounted guard stripped to the waist; the Oneidas and Stockbridge scouts strode about unclothed save for the narrow clout and sporran; and all day and all night our soldiers splashed in the river where our horses also stood belly deep, heads hanging, under the willows.

During that brief but scorching period I went to Mrs. Rannock’s every evening after dark, and usually found Lois lying in the open under the stars, the garret being like an oven, so she said.

Here we had made up our quarrel, and here, on the patch of uncut English grass, we lay listlessly, speaking only at intervals, gasping for air and coolness, which neither darkness nor stars had brought to this sun-cursed forest-land.

But for the last two nights I had not found Lois waiting for me, nor did Mrs. Rannock seem to know whither she had gone, which caused me much uneasiness.

The third evening I went to find her at Mrs. Rannock’s before the after-glow had died from the coppery zenith, and I encountered her moving toward the Spring path, just entering the massed elder bloom.  Her face was dewy with perspiration, pale, and somewhat haggard.

“Lois, why have you avoided me?” I exclaimed.  “All manner of vague forebodings have assailed me these two days past

“Listen to this silly lad!” she said impatiently.  “As though a few hours’ absence lessen loyalty and devotion!”

“But where have you been?”

“Where I may not take you, Euan.”

“And where is that?” I asked bluntly.

“Lord!  What a catechism is this for a free girl to answer willy-nilly!  If you must know, I have played the maid of ancient Greece these two nights past.  Otherwise, I had died, I think.”

And seeing my perplexed mien, she began to laugh.

“Euan, you are stupid!  Did not the Grecian maids spend half their lives in the bath?”