“Then take me to a room where we can be safe for a moment.  I shall not leave you till I have said my say.”

“Ah, please!” begged the girl.  “Some one is like to enter even now.”

Jack’s only reply was to turn to the first door and throw it open.  Finding that all was dark within, he caught Miss Meredith’s fingers, and drew her in after him, saying, as he did so, “Here we are safe, and you can tell me truly of your difficulties.”

With her hand held in both of the aide’s, Janice began a disconnected outpouring of the tale of her difficulties intermixed by an occasional sob, caused quite as much by the officer’s exclamations of sympathy as by the misery of her position.  Before a half of it had been spoken one of the hands grasping hers loosened itself, and she was gently drawn by an encircling arm till her head could find support on his shoulder; not resenting and indeed, scarcely conscious of the clasp, she rested it there with a strange sense of comfort and security.

“Alas!” grieved Brereton, when all had been told, “I am as deep, if not deeper, in poverty than you, and so I can give you no aid in money.  Bad as things are, however, there is better possible than selling yourself to that worm, if you will but take it.”

“What?”

“The French have come to our aid at last, and are sending us a fleet.  If Howe will but be as slow as usual, and the States but hasten their levies, we shall catch him between the fleet and army and Burgoyne him.  Even if he act quickly, he can save himself only by abandoning Philadelphia and consolidating his forces at New York.  They may then fight on, for both the strength and the weakness of the British is a natural stupidity which prevents them from knowing when they are beaten, but all doubt as to the outcome will be over.  Once more it will be possible for you to dwell at Greenwood, if you will but—­”

“But dadda says they will take it away and exile us,” broke in Janice.

“I have no doubt the rag-tag politicians, if not too busy scheming how to cripple General Washington, will set to on some such piece of folly, for by their persecutions and acts of outlawry and escheatage they have driven into Toryism enough to almost offset the Whigs the British plundering has made.  But from this you can be saved if you will but let me.”  As the officer ended, the clasp of his arm tightened, though it lost no element of the caress.

“How?”

“I stand well in the cause; and though I could not, I fear, save your property to you, they would never take it once it were in Whig hands, and so by a marriage to me you can secure it.  Ah, Miss Meredith, you have said you do not love me, and I stand here to-night a beggar, save for the sword I wear; but I love you as never man loved woman before, and my life shall be given to tenderness and care for you.  Surely your own home with me is better than exile with that cur!  And I’ll make