The Secretary's hand was still resting lightly on Prescott's arm, and the young Captain, feeling it tremble, knew that his companion told the truth.
"Yes," resumed Mr. Sefton, "I love a woman, and with all the greater fire because I am naturally undemonstrative and self-centred. The stream comes with an increased rush when it has to break through the ice. I love a woman, I say, and I am determined to have her. You know well who it is!"
"Helen Harley," said Prescott.
"I love Helen Harley," continued the Secretary, "and there are two men of whom I am jealous, but I shall speak first of one—the one whom I have feared the longer and the more. He is a soldier, a young man commended often by his superiors for gallantry and skill—deservedly so, too—I do not seek to deny it. He is here in Richmond now, and he has known Helen Harley all his life. They were boy and girl together. But he has become mixed in an intrigue here. There is another woman——"
"Mr. Sefton! You proposed that we understand each other, and that is just what I wish, too. You have been watching me all this time."
"Watching you! Yes, I have, and to purpose!" exclaimed the Secretary. "You have done few things in Richmond that have not come to my knowledge. Again I ask you what kind of a man do you think I am? When I saw you standing in my path I resolved that no act of yours should escape me. You know of this spy, Lucia Catherwood, and you know where she is. You see, I have even her name. Once I intended to arrest her and expose you to disgrace, but she had gone. I am glad now that we did not find her. I have a better use for her uncaught, though it annoys me that I cannot yet discover where she was when we searched that house."
The cold chill which he had felt before in the presence of this man assailed Prescott again. He was wholly within his power, and metaphorically, he could be broken on the wheel if the adroit and ruthless Secretary wished it. He bit his dry lip, but said nothing, still waiting for the other.
"I repeat that I have a better use for Miss Catherwood," continued Mr. Sefton. "Do you think I should have gone to all this trouble and touched upon so many springs merely to capture one misguided girl? What harm can she do us? Do you think the result of a great war and the fate of a continent are to be decided by a pair of dark eyes?"
They were walking now along a half-made street that led into the fields. Behind them lay the city, and before them the hills and the forest, all in a robe of white. Thin columns of smoke rose from the earthworks, where the defenders hovered over the fires, but no one was near enough to hear what the two men said.
"Then why have you held your hand?" asked Prescott.