"Oh, you are insufferable!" she cried bitterly. "I have tried to help you, and your impertinent curiosity——"
"Nay, Kitty, it is only the interest of a gentleman, as I said before," smiled Norton, "Still, you are right. My curiosity is impertinent, it may be, and if you were not the fairest maid I think I have ever seen, perhaps my interest in you would be less. Frankly, I expect to return to this vicinity before a great while, and shall look forward to seeing you again. But tell me, please—how is it that you know your mother's initials, but not her name?"
She looked at him for a long moment, divided between anger at his cool insistence and comprehension of the iron will behind his gentle courtesy. Her hand went to her dress.
"Because of this. It used to be my mother's, father has said——"
She laid a pin in his hand, and Norton stared down at it in rank incredulity. He turned it over and saw the graven initials on the back, "H.E.M." Then, reaching inside his buckskin coat, he brought out its duplicate and laid it beside the other. Both pins were identical—a small golden eagle, with half-obliterated enamel.
"By thunder!" said Norton very softly, "Kitty, do you know what this is?"
"No—a pin, that's all," she looked up at him, perplexed. He turned over his own pin, showing her the twined initials graven there, "C.N.—E.D."
"This was my only legacy from my father," he continued slowly. "Ask Colonel Boone to tell you the story. My father was Charles Norton, my mother Eliza Darby—their initials, you see. But how on earth did you get yours? It could not have belonged to your mother, unless your father had given it her. And if Abel Grigg was an officer in the Revolution—then I'm a liar!"
"But what is it?" she queried, wide-eyed. He came to her side, pointing to the two little gold eagles, and explained:
"This broken enamel, here, showed Cincinnatus at the plough—the Roman story, if you remember"—and she nodded to his words. "The motto was 'Omnia relinquit servare rempublicam'. Kitty, this eagle is from the order of the Society of the Cincinnati, composed only of Revolutionary officers and their eldest male descendants. I am a member, in virtue of my father's having been one before me—but how on earth did you get this? Does your father know what it is?"