The shadow of a smile flickered over her pale face.
"Your wonder will have to continue, if it is interesting enough, Captain Prescott," she replied.
He was silent, and then a sudden flame appeared in her cheeks.
"Why do you come here?" she exclaimed. "Why do you interest yourself in two poor lone women? Why do you try to help them?"
To see her show emotion made him grow cooler.
"I do not know why I come," he replied candidly.
"Then do not do so any more," she said. "You are risking too much, and you, a Southern soldier, have no right to do it."
She spoke coldly now and her face resumed its pallor.
"I am with the North," she continued, "but I do not wish any one of the South to imperil himself through me."
Prescott felt hotly indignant that she should talk thus to him after all that he had done.