I watched her face closely, as I had watched that of her father, expecting to see joy on the father's, sorrow on the daughter's. But they could not have been freer from the appearance of emotion if they had planned it all before.
"This will complicate the struggle, I should think," she said, dryly, "and it will increase your chances, Captain Montague and Lieutenant Melville, to win the epaulets of a colonel."
"We had expected," I said, "that Miss Desmond, a sincere friend of our cause, would express sorrow at this coalition which is like to prove so dangerous to us."
"My respect to my father, who does not believe as I do, forbids it," she said. "But I think the king's troops and his officers, all of them, will be equal to every emergency."
We bowed to the compliment, and, there being no further excuse for lingering, departed, patriot father and Tory daughter alike thanking us for our consideration in bringing them the news.
"The lady is very beautiful," said Marcel, when we had left the counting-house, "but she sits in the shadow of the North Pole."
"Self-restraint," I said, "is a good quality in woman as well as in man."
"I see," said Marcel. "It is not very hard to forgive treason when the traitor is a woman and beautiful."
"I do not know what you mean," I said, with frigidity.
"It does not matter," he replied. "I know."