reluctant coldness did not deter the questioner. "Who was it said
there was a petticoat back of every ancient war?" quoted Katharine,
lightly. "I fancy it's the same with the duello. But how strange that
nobody _knows_. Some of the older ones must, don't you think?"

"It's so long ago," murmured Shirley. "I suppose some could tell if they
would."

"Major Bristow, perhaps," conjectured Katharine thoughtfully.

"He was one of the seconds," admitted Shirley unhappily. "But by common
consent that side of it wasn't talked of at the time. Men in Virginia
have old-fashioned ideas about women...."

"Ah, it's _fine_ of them!" paeaned Katharine. "I can imagine the men who
knew about that dreadful affair, in their Southern chivalry, drawing a
cordon of silence about the name of that girl with her broken heart!
For if she loved one of the two, it must have been Sassoon--not Valiant,
else he would have stayed. How terrible to see one's lover killed in
such a way.... It was quickly ended for him, but the poor woman was left
to bear it all the years! She may be living yet, here maybe, some one
whom everybody knows. I suppose I am imaginative," she added, "but I
can't help wondering about her. I fancy she would never wholly get over
it, never be able to forget him, though she tried."

Shirley made some reply that was lost in the whirring wheels. The
other's words seemed almost an echo of what she herself had been
thinking.

"Maybe she married after a while, too. A woman must make a life for
herself, you know. If she lives here, it will be sad for her, this
opening of the old wound by John's coming.... And looking so like his
father--"

Katharine paused. There was a kind of exhilaration in this subtle
baiting. Determined as she was that Shirley should guess at the truth
before that ride ended, bludgeon-wielding was not to her taste. She
preferred the keen needle-point that injected its poison before the
thrust was even felt. She waited, wondering just how much it would be
necessary for her to say.

Shirley stirred uneasily, and in the glimpsing light her face looked
troubled. Katharine's voice had touched pathos, and in spite of her
distaste of the subject, Shirley had been entering into the feeling of
that supposititious woman. There had come to her, like a touch of eery
clairvoyance, the suggestion the other had meant to convey of her actual
existence; and this was sharpened by the sudden recollection that
Valiant had himse