She seemed to think this over. “And honor?” she resumed, her face averted. “It binds always, I suppose? It imposes rules which it is not possible to evade, no matter what the exigency may be? If you had to choose between your mother’s life—shall I say?—and your honor, what then, Major Craven?”
“I cannot conceive the situation,” I answered, smiling at the absurdity of the idea.
“You might be on parole as you are to-day,” she rejoined. “Suppose that your mother’s life depended, no matter how, on your presence, on your breach of your word? What would you do? Would you still put your honor first?”
“I do not know what I should do,” I answered. “The thing is apart from ordinary experience. But I know what my mother would say. She would say, ‘Keep your word!’”
She was silent for a moment. “And to betray your country even in a small matter, that too would be a breach of honor, I suppose?”
“I am afraid that it would be a very bad one,” I answered, smiling. “If you are thinking of bribing me to disclose our secrets, I had better tell you at once that I have no secrets, Miss Wilmer.”
“And if you had you would not sell them?”
“Neither sell them, nor tell them. I hope not.”
“No,” she replied. “I do not think you would.” I heard her sigh deeply. Then, “I will take your glass,” she said. And she took it and went into the house.
She left me puzzled, puzzled to the last degree; but at the same time I felt that the girl had come nearer to me. She left a picture of herself a little different from that which I had hitherto possessed. Perhaps it was the hat, the wide-brimmed shadowy hat that softened her features and by taking from her height, lowered the stately carriage of her head. Perhaps it was the vague elusive sadness of her tone. Perhaps something else. She had named my mother. I wondered what my mother would think of her, with her perplexing ways, her reserve, her aloofness, the hostility which she had not stooped to veil. Often my mother had said in jest that she did not know where I should find a wife, since I looked shyly on our country belles, and she would have none of our town ladies. To which my father had answered that such fastidiousness generally ended in a milkmaid—and that he believed that the next Lady Craven would be no better.