“Just as I was hurrying to leave the wounded man and go to my guns, which were already bellowing, he handed me a bundle of papers. He said that he had a daughter who must be somewhere in the South, if she had not been shot in passing through the lines. He begged me to find her, if possible, and give the papers to her. When I asked him the name of his daughter, he answered that it was Evelyn Byrd.”
The girl was livid and trembling, but what passion it was that so shook her Kilgariff could not make out. He paused, to give her time for recovery. She slowly rose from the bench on which she was sitting, and with a firm, elastic step walked out into the grounds, where her mare was grazing. The animal abandoned the grass, and trotted up to her mistress to be caressed.
As the young woman stood there, stroking the mare’s nose, Kilgariff thought it the most beautiful picture he had ever looked upon—the lithe, slender girl, who carried herself with the grace of an athlete not overtrained, caressing the beautiful mare and seeming to hold mute but loving converse with a boundlessly loyal friend.
“And how much it means!” he thought. “What a nature that woman has! And what a life hers must have been so far!”
Then came over him a great and loving longing to be himself the agent of atonement to her for all the wrong that had vexed her young life, to make her future so bright and joyous that her past should seem to her only a troubled dream from which he had been privileged to waken her. But with this longing came the bitter thought that this could never be—that he was debarred by his own misfortunes from the privilege of winning or seeking to win Evelyn Byrd’s love.
Then arose again in his mind the questions of the early morning—the question of duty, the question of the possibility of avoiding the wrong he so dreaded to do. Was there yet time for him to take himself out of Evelyn Byrd’s life? Or was it already too late? What and how much did her embarrassment in his presence mean? Had she indeed already, and all unconsciously, learned to return the great, passionate love he felt for her? Had he blundered beyond remedy in making himself mean so much to her? Could he now go away and leave her out of his life without inflicting upon her even a greater wrong and a severer suffering than that which his leaving would be meant to avert? If not, then what should he do? What could he do?
He felt himself in a blind alley from which there was no escape. Unhappy indeed is the man who is confronted with a divided duty, a problem of right and wrong which he feels himself powerless to solve. In that hour Owen Kilgariff was more acutely unhappy than he had ever been, even in the darkest period of his great calamity.
Presently Evelyn returned to the porch and seated herself, quite as if nothing had occurred out of the commonplace.
“What was the man’s name?” she asked, with no sign of excitement or emotion of any kind in her voice or manner.