"Agatha," he began, as the two stood in the piazza in the glow of the early setting sun and in the midst of the blood-red Virginia creepers that embowered the place, "Agatha, do you remember the words I spoke to you on the picket-line at Fairfax Court-house?" Then without waiting for her reply, he continued: "I have come to you now to say those words over again, at a more fitting time and in a more appropriate place. I love you. I have loved you ever since those days in Richmond, those precious days when I first began to know you for what you are. I loved you all through that cruel time when, in obedience to what you believed was your duty, you decreed that there should be 'war between me and thee.' And now after all that you have done and dared for me, my love for a nature so pure, so noble, so heroic, passes understanding. I have a right to tell you this now. Tell me in return, if it displeases you?"
With that absolute truthfulness which was the basis of her nature, Agatha replied as frankly as he had spoken.
"It pleases me," she said. "I had not expected this. I thought I had repulsed you so rudely that—oh! Baillie, you will never know."
In a torrent of tears that were a more welcome answer than any words could have been, she buried her face in her hands.
Half an hour later these two sat by a crackling fire, arranging practical affairs.
"You do not wish to go back to The Oaks, then, even for a few weeks, and to save appearances?"
"No, Baillie, I cannot. I should have to act a lie every hour of my stay there. I should be obliged to pretend friendship for my aunts when I feel nothing of the kind. They have insulted the memory of my grandfather, and they have spoken of you in a way that never so long as I live will I let any human being speak of you without resenting it. I do not care to 'save appearances,' as you put it. Appearances may look out for themselves. 'Saving appearances' is only a sneaking way of lying. No. I will go to some friends in Richmond, if they will let me—"
"Why not go to Warlock?" he asked.
"Why, that would outrage the proprieties beyond forgiveness now that we—well, under the circumstances."
So Mistress Agatha did "care for appearances" and conventions after all. But Baillie did not think of that.