There was silence for a moment and in that short space of time Dorothea’s mind was busy. She had no intention of volunteering any information as to what she had seen. She was convinced now of the correctness of her first impression—that the face she had beheld for a moment was that of the escaping officer. But instantly her thoughts flew again to April: Her cousin’s distinct surprise at finding her out on the porch; her evident confusion and her final injunction to Dorothea not to say anything to the others of having seen her; all these things pointed to one explanation.
April knew as well as she that there was some one outside the house that night.
“But why,” Dorothea speculated to herself, “should April shield a Yankee officer who was escaping?” and instantly she remembered the thin band of red in her cousin’s girdle and the “Red Strings” of whom Hal had told them that night.
“Can April be a ‘Red String’?” she asked herself. “Impossible!” she answered. April never lost an opportunity to proclaim her loyalty or to condemn the Yankees whom she apparently hated. Yet to seem excessively loyal would be the best way to keep her secret if she had one, was the next conclusion Dorothea reached—and this thought seemed to her an explanation of many things.
“At least I shan’t tell anything, if I don’t have to,” she concluded and so waited for the next words from out of the darkness.
“No one saw anybody, I’m sure,” she heard Mrs. May calling down to those on the lawn. “The hounds must have followed the wrong scent, and—”
“Were any of you ladies outside the house during the evening?” asked Val Tracy.
Here was a direct question that seemed to Dorothea aimed at her. Still, she held her tongue. April, as well as she, had been out and she waited for her cousin to answer.
“I saw Miss Drummond go out on the gallery,” came the gentle voice of Miss Perrine. “Of course I don’t say she saw anything, and probably she has forgotten she went out, but—”
“I was on the porch with Dorothea,” April cut in, “and I saw no one.”