"Why, he doesn't give me that idea," exclaimed Leonora, her eyes widening. "He seems unguarded, and impulsive, and ardent."
Colonel Ashley was very considerably her senior and far too experienced to be ingenuous himself. He made no comment on the conviction her words created within him. He only looked at her in silence, receiving her remark with courteous attention. Then he resumed:——
"Of course in a civil war there are always some instances of undue leniency,—the pressure of circumstances induces it,—but rarely indeed such as this; it amounts to aiding and abetting the enemy, however unpremeditated. Young Roscoe could not have secured the means or information for his destructive raid had not Baynell permitted him to be housed here. Doubtless, however, Baynell thought it a mere visit of the boy to his father's family."
"But Captain Baynell never dreamed that Julius Roscoe was in the house!" she exclaimed.
"That's just what he says he did—dreamed that he saw him! I can rely on you not to repeat my words. But I have had no confidential talk with him."
"I am sure—I know—they were never together for a moment."
"The surgeon says that Roscoe's knuckles cut to the bone," commented Ashley, with a significant smile. But the triumphs of stultifying Mrs. Gwynn in conversation were all inadequate to restore his usual serene satisfaction, and once more he looked restlessly about the rooms and sighed.
"What do you think Captain Baynell was guilty of? Permitting an enemy to remain within the lines, perdu, unsuspected, to gather information, and make off with it—conniving at the concealment, and assisting the escape of an enemy? And you call yourself his friend!"
Leonora's cheeks were flushed. Her voice rang with a tense vibration. She fixed her interlocutor with a challenging eye.
"Oh—I don't know what he intended," replied Ashley, almost irritably. "Doubtless he had some high-minded motive, so intricate that he can never explain it, and nobody else can ever unravel it. I only know he has played the fool,—and I fear he has ruined himself irretrievably."