mixed half-nigger peons who
truckle to them. You bet!"

His blood had stirred quickly at the mention of the Robles Ranche,
but the rest of Susy's speech was too much in the vein of her old
extravagance to touch him seriously. He found himself only considering
how strange it was that the old petulance and impulsiveness of her
girlhood were actually bringing back with them her pink cheeks and
brilliant eyes.

"You surely didn't ask Jim to bring me here," he said smilingly, "to
tell me that Mrs. Peyton"--he corrected himself hastily as a malicious
sparkle came into Susy's blue eyes--"that my wife was a Southern woman,
and probably sympathized with her class? Well, I don't know that I
should blame her for that any more than she should blame me for being a
Northern man and a Unionist."

"And she doesn't blame you?" asked Susy sneeringly.

The color came slightly to Clarence's cheek, but before he could reply
the actress added,--

"No, she prefers to use you!"

"I don't think I understand you," said Clarence, rising coldly.

"No, you don't understand HER!" retorted Susy sharply. "Look here,
Clarence Brant, you're right; I didn't ask you here to tell you--what
you and everybody knows--that your wife is a Southerner. I didn't ask
you here to tell you what everybody suspects--that she turns you round
her little finger. But I did ask you here to tell you what nobody,
not even you, suspects--but what I know!--and that is that she's a
TRAITOR--and more, a SPY!--and that I've only got to say the word,
or send that man Jim to say the word, to have her dragged out of her
Copperhead den at Robles Ranche and shut up in Fort Alcatraz this very
night!"

Still with the pink glowing in her rounding cheek, and eyes snapping
like splintered sapphires, she rose to her feet, with her pretty
shoulders lifted, her small hands and white teeth both tightly
clenched, and took a step towards him. Even in her attitude there was a
reminiscence of her willful childhood, although still blended with
the provincial actress whom he had seen on the stage only an hour ago.
Thoroughly alarmed at her threat, in his efforts to conceal his feelings
he was not above a weak retaliation. Stepping back, he affected to
regard her with a critical admiration that was only half simulated, and
said with a smile,--

"Very well done--but you have forgotten the flag."

She did not flinch. Rather accepting the sarcasm as a tribute to her
art, she went on with in