“No,” she said.  “Not—­not yet, They are waiting for the end.”

“And you?” he asked in grave surprise, glancing at the door of the Judge’s room.

Then she remembered Clarence.

“I am waiting for my cousin,” she said.

Even as she spoke she was with this man again at the Brinsmade gate.  Those had been her very words!  Intuition told her that he, too, was thinking of that time.  Now he had found her at his desk, and, as if that were not humiliation enough, with one of his books taken down and laid open at his signature.  Suffused, she groped for words to carry her on.

“I am waiting for Clarence, Mr. Brice.  He was here, and is gone somewhere.”

He did not seem to take account of the speech.  And his silence—­goad to indiscretion—­pressed her to add:—­ “You saved him, Mr. Brice.  I—­we all —­thank you so much.  And that is not all I want to say.  It is a poor enough acknowledgment of what you did,—­for we have not always treated you well.”  Her voice faltered almost to faintness, as he raised his hand in pained protest.  But she continued:  “I shall regard it as a debt I can never repay.  It is not likely that in my life to come I can ever help you, but I shall pray for that opportunity.”

He interrupted her.

“I did nothing, Miss Carvel, nothing that the most unfeeling man in our army would not do.  Nothing that I would not have done for the merest stranger.”

“You saved him for me,” she said.

O fateful words that spoke of themselves!  She turned away from him for very shame, and yet she heard him saying:—­ “Yes, I saved him for you.”

His voice was in the very note of the sadness which has the strength to suffer, to put aside the thought of self.  A note to which her soul responded with anguish when she turned to him with the natural cry of woman.

“Oh, you ought not to have come here to-night.  Why did you come?  The Doctor forbade it.  The consequences may kill you.”

“It does not matter much,” he answered.  “The Judge was dying.”

“How did you know?”

“I guessed it,—­because my mother had left me.”

“Oh, you ought not to have come!” she said again.

“The Judge has been my benefactor,” he answered quietly.  I could walk, and it was my duty to come.”

“You did not walk!” she gasped.

He smiled, “I had no carriage,” he said.

With the instinct of her sex she seized the chair and placed it under him.  “You must sit down at once,” she cried.

“But I am not tired,” he replied.

“Oh, you must sit down, you must, Captain Brice.”  He started at the title, which came so prettily from her lips, “Won’t you please!” she said pleadingly.

He sat down.  And, as the sun peeps out of a troubled sky, she smiled.

“It is your chair,” she said.

He glanced at the book, and the bit of sky was crimson.  But still he said nothing.