“Is it not reason enough, Peggy?”
“No,” she cried passionately. “It is not. Oh, I see it all! Thee has heard from General Arnold.”
“Why should you think that?” Drayton regarded her queerly. “What would hearing from him have to do with my desertion?”
“Everything,” she answered wildly. “He hath wooed thee from thy allegiance, as he said he would. ’Twas on this very spot that he boasted that not two months would pass before thee would be fighting by his side. And I defended thee because I believed that naught could turn thee from thy country. Why look thee, John! how short hath been the time since thou wert made a captain! For valor, thee said, at Hobkirk’s Hill.”
“That was under Greene,” he made answer. “He is not a frog-eating Frenchman.”
“Yet that same Frenchman hath left country and family to give his services, his money, his life if necessary to help an alien people in their fight for liberty. And thee cannot fight under such a man because, forsooth, he is French. French,” with cutting scorn, “who would not rather be French, English, German, or aught else than an American who would desert his country for so small a thing?”
“Don’t, Peggy,” he pleaded. “It—it hurts.”
“And I have been so proud of thee,” she went on unheeding his plea, her voice thrilling with the intensity of her feeling. “So proud of thee at Middlebrook, when thee was spoken of as a lad of parts. So proud when General Washington himself said he wished the whole army had thy spirit. I treasured those words, John Drayton. And again I have been proud of thy conduct in battle, and for all thy career, because I thought of thee as my soldier. Oh!” she cried with passion, “I would rather thee had died in battle; and yet, from the opening to the close of every campaign I have prayed nightly that thee might be spared.”
Drayton adjusted his neck ruffles, and swallowed hard.
“Peggy,” he said. “Peggy——” and paused.