"And when the door of the coach closed on myself and my maid,--when
we rolled on away from the city, in spite of all I could do or
say--, why, then, sir, you were my jailer. Have matters changed
since then?"

"Madam, from the first you were splendid! You showed pure courage.
'I am a prisoner!' you cried at first--not more than that. But you
said it like a lady, a noblewoman. I admired you then because you
faced me--whom you had never seen before--with no more fear than
had I been a private and you my commanding officer."

"Fear wins nothing."

"Precisely. Then let us not fear what the future may have for us.
I have no directions beyond this point,--Pittsburg. I was to take
boat here, that was all. I was to convey you out into the West,
somewhere, anywhere, no one was to know where. And someway,
anyway, my instructions were, I was to lose you--to lose you.
Madam, in plain point of fact. And now, at the very time I am
indiscreet enough to tell you this much, you make my cheerful task
the more difficult by saying that you must be regarded only as a
prisoner of war!"

Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever
showing in her dark eyes. The clear light of the bright autumn
morning had no terrors for youth and health like hers. She put
back a truant curl from her forehead where it had sought egress to
the world, and looked him full in the face now, drawing a deep
breath which caused the round of her bosom to lift the lace at her
throat. Then, woman-like, she did the unlocked for, and laughed at