more for
speaking.

"My father has had little peace since coming here," she said, at length.
"He is old and none too well; and as for king and Congress, asks nothing
but his right to hold aloof. And this they will not give him."

Remembering what Jennifer had told me of Gilbert Stair's trimming, I
smiled within.

"That is the way of all the world in war-time, _ma petite_. A partizan
may suffer once for all, but both sides hold a neutral lawful prey."

'Twas as the spark to tinder; my word the spark and in her eyes the
answering flash.

"I tell him so!" she cried. "I tell him always that the king will have
his own again. But still he halts and hesitates; and when these rebels
come and quarter on us--"

I fear she must have seen my inward smile this time, for she broke off
in the midst, and I made haste to forestall her flying out at me.

"Oh, come, my dear; you should not be so fierce with him when you
yourself have brought a rebel to his house to nurse alive."

She looked me fairly in the eye. "You should be the last to remind me of
my treason, Monsieur John."

"Then you are free to call it treason, are you, Margery?" I said.

She looked away from me again. "How can it well be less than treason?"
Then suddenly she turned and clasped her hands upon my knee. "You must
not be too hard upon me, Monsieur John. I've tried to do my duty as I
saw it, and I have asked no questions. And yet I know much more than you
have told me."

"What do you know?"

"I know your wound has been your safety. If you should leave this room
and house to-day you would never wear the buff and blue again, Captain
Ireton."

"You mean they would hang me for a spy. Will you believe me, Margery, if
I say I have not yet worn the buff and blue at all?"

"_Oh_!" The little exclamation was of pure delight. "Then they were all
mistaken? You are no rebel, after all?"

Was ever man so tempted since the fall of Adam? As I have writ it down
for you in measured words, I was no more than half a patriot at this
time. And love has made more traitors than its opposites of lust or
greed. In no uncertain sense I was a man without a country; and this
fair maiden on the hassock at my feet was all the world to me. I saw in
briefer time than any clock hands ever measured how much a yielding word
might do for me; and then I thought of Richard Jennifer and was myself
again.

"Nay, little one," I said; "there has been no mistake. For their own
purposes my