“But is that the true reason?” I demanded.
“It is the one I shall let the world believe, it any rate.”
“That should be no answer,” I retorted, my heart like a furnace with the rage that was coming over me. “Why do you palter? I have the right to know. You have made your dozen poor jests upon me, and said I was in love with Peg. Perhaps you would mean those jests. I tell you I do not believe your word when you say it is a move against Calhoun. That is mere glamour and fallacy and meant for blindness. It is no tale to tell me as though I were some common gull. Give me your reason, then—the true one. Does Eaton know he is to go?”
All this I reeled off, and gave the General no opening for an answer, asking a dozen questions at once. But he sat quiet and with a friendly patience, and his face spoke to me only of nearness and sympathy, and never a shade of hurt for the rudeness I visited upon him. What a heart of gold was his! He, who bore nothing from an enemy, would bear all at the hands of a friend.
When I was run out of queries he began to take me up, beginning at the end.
“Eaton knows,” said he; “he knew before he left for Baltimore. For him the change will be a relief; his has been no bed of flowers, and in St. Augustine his place and power, and last, not least, his peace, will gain promotion.”
“Doubtless,” said I, in a high pitch of scorn, “he can there flaunt his riches in the faces of the Dons, and show Peg's beauty, and make a vast display.”
“You interrupt me,” remarked the General. “However let me ask a question: Why do you remind me how I've jested and mayhap made some idle laugh between us, and as innocent as idle, over your feeling for the little girl? Why do you put that to me?”
“Because,” said I, in a fury, “I think you break up your cabinet for that. You will have it how Peg is in some peril of me; you would send Peg to Florida on a pretense to make her safe from me. There you have it. You see I can be the honester and the franker man. I pass you my heart on a spear.”
The General arose from the chair into which he had flung himself, and taking me by the two shoulders, would look on me squarely, while I in my turn must gaze into his gray depths. I could see the tears stand in his fine eyes.