The Continental Dragoon Part 21

While she was looking at the book, Peyton took up the flowers.

Elizabeth, as if thinking they were still where she had laid them, put out her hand to repossess them, keeping her eyes the while on the book. For a moment, her hand ranged the table in search, then she abandoned the attempt to regain them.

Peyton held them out to her.

"No, I thank you," she said, laying down the book, and went back to the spinet.

"Ah, you give them to me!" cried Peyton, with sudden pleasure.

"Not at all! I merely do not wish to have them now."

"Oh," said he, thinking to make account by finding offence where none was really expressed, "has my touch contaminated them for you?"

"How can you talk so absurdly?" And she resumed her seat at the spinet, and her playing.

Peyton stood holding the flowers, looking at her, and presently heaved a deep sigh. This not moving her, he suddenly had an access of pride, brought himself together, and saying, with quick resolution, "I bid you good-night and good-by, madam," went rapidly towards the door of the east hall. But his resolution weakened when his hand touched the k.n.o.b, and, to make pretext for further sight of her, he turned and went to go out the other door.

Elizabeth had had a moment of alarm at his first sign of departure, but had not betrayed the feeling. Now when, from her seat at the spinet, she saw him actually crossing the threshold near her, she called out, gently, "A moment, captain."

The pleased look on his face, as he turned towards her inquiringly, betrayed his gratification at being called back.

"You are taking my flowers away," she said, in explanation.

He plainly showed his disappointment. "Your pardon. My thoughtlessness.

But you said you didn't wish to keep them." He laid them on the spinet.

"I do not,--yet a woman must allow very few hands to carry off flowers of her gathering."

She rose and took up the flowers and walked towards the fireplace.

"Then you at least take them back from my hands," said Peyton.

"Why, yes,--for this," and she tossed them into the fire.

He looked at them as they withered in the blaze, then said, "Have you any objection to my carrying away the ashes, Miss Philipse?"

She answered, considerately, "'Twill take you more time than you can lose, to gather them up."

"Oh, I am in no haste."

"Oh, then, I ask your pardon. A moment since, you were about to go."

"But now I prefer to stay."

"Indeed? May I ask the reason--but no matter."

But he felt that a reason ought to be forthcoming. "Why, you know, because--" And here he thought of one. "I wish to stay to meet Major Colden, of whom you say I am afraid. I shall prove to you at least I am no coward. After what you have said to me this night, I must in honor wait to face him."

"But it is late now. I don't think he will come till to-morrow."

"Then I can wait till to-morrow."

"But your duty calls you back to your own camp, now that your wound has healed."

"I think my wound has undergone a slight relapse. You shall see, at least, I am not afraid of your champion."

"If that is your only reason,--your desire to quarrel with Major Colden,--I cannot invite you to remain."

"Well, then, to tell the truth, there _is_ another reason. When I said, a while since, I had never seen you in that gown, I used too many words. I should have said I had never really seen you at all."

"Where were your eyes?" she asked, absently, seeming to take his words literally and to perceive no compliment.

"I was in a kind of waking sleep."

"It has been a time and place of hallucinations, I think. I, too, sir, have been, since I came here a week ago, under the strangest spell. A kind of light madness or witchery was over me, and made me act ridiculously, against my very will. A week ago, when you were disabled, I intended to give you up to the British,--as I should do now, if it would not be so troublesome--"

"'Twould be troublesome to _me_, I a.s.sure you," he said, interrupting.

"But at the last moment," she went on, "I did precisely the reverse of what I wished. Awhile ago, in this room, I seemed to be in the possession of some evil spirit, which made me say preposterous things.

I can only remember some wild raving I indulged in, and some undeserved rudeness I displayed towards you. But, will you believe, the instant you left me, I recovered my right mind. I am like one returned from bedlam, cured, and you will pardon any incivility I may have done you in my peculiar state, I'm sure, since you speak of having been curiously afflicted yourself."

"Then you mean," he faltered, "you did not really love me?"

"Why, certainly I did not! How could you think I did? Something possessed my will. But, thank heaven, I am myself again. Why, sir, how could I? You know very little of me, sir, to think--Oh!" She covered her face with her hands. "What things must I have said and done, in my clouded state, to make you think that! You,--an enemy, a rebel, a person whose only possible interest to me arises from his enmity!"

Dazzled as he was by her newly discovered beauty, the imposition on him was complete. He saw this covetable being now indifferent to him, out of his power to possess, likely soon to pa.s.s into the possession of another.

"Pray try to forget awhile that enmity," he supplicated.

"I shall try, and then you can have no interest for me at all."

"Then don't try, I beg. I'd rather have an interest for you as an enemy than not at all."

"Why, really, sir--" She seemed half puzzled, half amused.

"Lord," quoth he, "how I have been deluded! I thought my love-making that night, feigned though it was, had wakened a response."

"Love-making, do you say? Will you believe me, sir, I don't remember what pa.s.sed here that night, save the unaccountable ending,--my making you my guest instead of their prisoner."

"I wish you were pretending all this!"

"Why, if 'twould make you happier that I were, I wish so, too."

"How can you speak so lightly of such matters?"

"What matters?"

"Love, of course."

"Why, do men alone, because they laugh at women for taking love seriously, have the right to take it lightly? And of what love am I speaking lightly,--the love you say you feigned for me, or the love you say you thought you had awakened in me?"