udged her! And then she thought bitterly of the count
and the baron, and burned to face the latter, and in some vague way
charge the stolen kiss upon him as the cause of all her shame and
mortification. And lastly she thought of her father, and began to hate
everybody. But above all and through all, in her vague fears for her
father, in her passionate indignation against the baron, in her fretful
impatience of Allan, one thing was ever dominant and obtrusive; one
thing she tried to put away, but could not,--the handsome, colorless
face of Major Van Zandt, with the red welt of her riding-whip overlying
its cold outlines.

III

The rising wind, which had ridden much faster than Mistress Thankful,
had increased to a gale by the time it reached Morristown. It swept
through the leafless maples, and rattled the dry bones of the elms. It
whistled through the quiet Presbyterian churchyard, as if trying to
arouse the sleepers it had known in days gone by. It shook the blank,
lustreless windows of the Assembly Rooms over the Freemasons' Tavern,
and wrought in their gusty curtains moving shadows of those amply
petticoated dames and tightly hosed cavaliers who had swung in "Sir
Roger," or jigged in "Money Musk," the night before.

But I fancy it was around the isolated "Ford Mansion," better known as
the "headquarters," that the wind wreaked its grotesque rage. It howled
under its scant eaves, it sang under its bleak porch, it tweaked the
peak of its front gable, it whistled through every chink and cranny of
its square, solid, unpicturesque structure. Situated on a hillside that
descended rapidly to the Whippany River, every summer zephyr that
whispered through the porches of the Morristown farm-houses charged as
a stiff breeze upon the swinging half doors and windows of the "Ford
Mansion"; every wintry wind became a gale that threatened its security.
The sentry who paced before its front porch knew from experience when
to linger under its lee, and adjust his threadbare outer coat to the
bitter north wind.

Within the house something of this cheerlessness prevailed. It had an
ascetic gloom, which the scant firelight of the reception-room, and the
dying embers on the dining-room hearth, failed to dissipate. The
central hall was broad, and furnished plainly with a few rush-bottomed
chairs, on one of which half dozed a black body-servant of the
commander-in-chief. Two officers in the dining-room, drawn close by
the c