“My dear, my dear,” said her mother, gently but firmly, “you don’t understand, you don’t——”
“Mamma,” said the girl, “this man has left his desk in the War Department so that he can have the pleasure of persecuting me.”
Both the mother and the rejected suitor noticed her identification of herself with Captain Thorne in the pronoun “me,” one with sinking heart and the other with suppressed fury.
“He has never attempted anything active in the service before,” continued Edith, “and when I ask him to face the man he accuses, he turns like a coward!”
“Mrs. Varney, if she thinks——”
“I think nothing,” said the girl furiously; “I know that Captain Thorne’s character is above suspicion.”
Arrelsford sneered.
“His character! Where did he come from—what is he?”
“For that matter,” said Edith intensely, “where did you come from, and what are you?”
“That is not the question,” was the abrupt reply.