“Nonsense, Cliff! there was no danger. Peggy can tell you that there was no risk of my being thought other than I seemed.”
“I like it not,” he repeated. “And now, Harriet, what will you do? It doth not seem wise to me, or right for you to return to New York.”
“I shall stay with Peggy for a time,” she told him easily.
“We shall be pleased to have her with us, my cousin,” spoke Peggy instantly, noting his troubled glance.
“But she may have to remain until peace, which may be long in coming, Peggy.”
“I think not, Clifford,” spoke Harriet, before Peggy could make any response. “If we enforce the new policy which Sir Guy Carleton hath inaugurated, America will be glad to have peace on any terms.”
“I have heard of no new policy,” he said somewhat curtly. “What is it?”
“You have scarcely been in the way of hearing new things, my brother. Know then that the colonies are to be so harassed from all sides that they will sue for peace. On the frontiers,” she exulted, seemingly unmindful of Peggy’s presence, “and on the coasts.”
“There hath been too much of that already,” he said grimly. “It hath brought us into disfavor with the entire world. Take the death of Fairfax Johnson, for instance, which was the direct result of such a policy. ’Twas a base and ignoble act to murder him; for it was murder.”
“Englishmen did not do that, Clifford. ’Twas the loyalists.”