“What alternative?” asked Frances, pitying his emotions deeply, but eagerly seizing upon every circumstance to prolong the interview.
“What alternative! Am I not compelled to spend this night in the saddle to recapture your brother, when I had thought to lay my head on its pillow, with the happy consciousness of having contributed to his release? You make me seem your enemy; I, who would cheerfully shed the last drop of blood in your service. I repeat, Frances, it was rash; it was unkind; it was a sad, sad mistake.”
She bent towards him and timidly took one of his hands, while with the other she gently removed the curls from his burning brow.
“Why go at all, dear Peyton?” she asked. “You have done much for your country, and she cannot exact such a sacrifice as this at your hand.”
“Frances! Miss Wharton!” exclaimed the youth, springing on his feet, and pacing the floor with a cheek that burned through its brown covering, and an eye that sparkled with wounded integrity. “It is not my country, but my honor, that requires the sacrifice. Has he not fled from a guard of my own corps? But for this, I might have been spared the blow! But if the eyes of the Virginians are blinded to deception and artifice, their horses are swift of foot, and their sabers keen. We shall see, before to-morrow’s sun, who will presume to hint that the beauty of the sister furnished a mask to conceal the brother! Yes, yes, I should like, even now,” he continued, laughing bitterly, “to hear the villain who would dare to surmise that such treachery existed!”
“Peyton, dear Peyton,” said Frances, recoiling from his angry eye, “you curdle my blood—would you kill my brother?”
“Would I not die for him!” exclaimed Dunwoodie, as he turned to her more mildly. “You know I would; but I am distracted with the cruel surmise to which this step of Henry’s subjects me. What will Washington think of me, should he learn that I ever became your husband?”
“If that alone impels you to act so harshly towards my brother,” returned Frances, with a slight tremor in her voice, “let it never happen for him to learn.”
“And this is consolation, Frances!”
“Nay, dear Dunwoodie, I meant nothing harsh or unkind; but are you not making us both of more consequence with Washington than the truth will justify?”