"Do you see what a poor miserable wretch I am?" he went on, apparently forgetful that any one besides his sister might be within hearing, and she so absorbed in the grief and shame of the revelation that she possessed no more forethought. "Think of me as an officer in my regiment, and know with what a reddened face I must have walked the streets when we paraded, conscious that if suddenly called to duty—even the quelling of a mob at the street-corner—I should be obliged to disgrace myself at once and forever! Think what I have suffered since the war broke out!—commission after commission offered me—loving my country as I believe man never loved it before—and yet not daring to strike one blow in its behalf. Obliged to make slight excuses when others have inquired why I did not go to the war—obliged to wear a double face, a mask, everywhere and at all times—dreading detection every day, and in that detection perhaps the loss of my proud father's life and of the love that has made the only hope of my own—cursing the omen that unwittingly gave me the brand of the coward in my very name—racked and tortured thus, and yet obliged to hold an honorable place among my fellow-men—it has been too hard, Elsie, too hard! And now to lose all! If she has learned to suspect me—I know her brave heart and her proud nature—I shall lose her, the richest, noblest thing on earth, half grasped, to be mourned for as never man yet mourned for woman! Do help me, Elsie! Help me to conceal my shame—to deceive her, yes—God help me!—to deceive her before whom my very soul should be laid bare—so that she will not know me for the miserable wretch and coward that I am!"
And all this while his face was wrought and contorted, at short intervals, by those fearful spasms of shame and mental suffering; and ever and anon his hands locked together and seemed to wring themselves even beyond his own volition. How different he looked, at that moment, from the handsome, noble man, in the full pride of mature adolescence, who had stepped upon that piazza but a few moments before!
"I would do any thing in the world to help you, Carlton; but what can I do?" faltered the young girl, who saw no light beyond the thick, black cloud of shame and ruin slowly settling down on the head of her beloved brother.
"Help me to conceal the truth"—he went on—"to enforce any excuse for not leaving the city at this moment! I know it is base and contemptible, but it is for a good purpose, Elsie—to save a heart that is already distracted, and a life that must be wrecked without it. We may never be placed in the same circumstances again—the war may soon be ended—if she can only be kept from knowing this, I may never be placed in the same peril again, and my whole life shall be one long proof that I am not otherwise unworthy of the woman I love so madly."
"It does not need, Carlton Brand!" sounded a voice from within—a voice that both recognized but too well; and out of the hall came the figure of Margaret Hayley.
Her words and her manner alike proved that she had heard all, or at least enough; for there was an expression of withering contempt flashing out of her dark eye and curling her proud lip, not easily to be borne by any person towards whom they were directed. There did not seem, for the moment, to be any thing like pity in her composition; and if there had been love within her heart, it appeared to have been so crushed out by one stunning blow that it could never bloom again any more than the wild flower ground beneath the heel of the wayfarer. Her head was proud, erect, haughty, disdainful; and one who had leisure to examine her closely would have seen that the nostril was opening and shutting convulsively, as if overwhelming passion was only suppressed by the physical act of holding the breath. Elsie Brand was too much dizzied and confused to be quite aware what had happened or what was about to happen. She merely uttered a cry of agitation and fright, and shrunk back alike from her brother and the woman who had come to be his judge. Carlton Brand saw more, with the quick eye of the lawyer and the sharpened perception of the lover. He realized that Margaret Hayley had heard his agonized and unmanly confession—that anger and scorn had driven away from her face the love which had so often and so pleasantly beamed upon him—that his doom was sealed.
With the knowledge came back to him that manliness in demeanor of which he had been so sorely in need a moment before. In the presence only of his sister, and when pleading with her to assist in rescuing him from the pit of grief and shame into which he felt himself to be sinking, he had been humble, abject, even cowering. Now, and in the presence of the woman for whose softened opinion he would have given the world and almost bartered his hopes of heaven,—he stood erect, and if the spasm of pain did not entirely pass away from his face, at least it changed in its character so that he was a man once more.
"I understand you, Miss Hayley," were the first words he spoke. "You have heard some words not intended for your ear. You have been listening."
"If you merely mean that I have heard what was not intended for my ear, you certainly speak the truth, Mr. Brand," she replied, catching the formality of his address at once. "But if you mean that I have listened meanly, or even voluntarily, to words intended to be confidential, you wrong yourself, equally with me, in saying so. You have spoken so loudly that not only I but even the servants in the house could not well avoid hearing you; and there is not much 'listening' in hearing words almost brawled on a piazza."
Her words were very bitter—they beseemed the lips from which they flowed. A man who loved her less or, who had fewer of the natural impulses of the gentleman than Carlton Brand, might only have thought of the taunt conveyed and forgotten its justice. He did not do so, but bowed at once with an air of respectful humility, and said: