“I am not naturally timid, thank you,” returned Judithe, with a careless smile, all the more careless that she felt the blue eyes were regarding her with unusual watchfulness; “one must expect all those inconveniences in war times, especially when people are located on the border land, and I hear it is really but a short ride to the coast, where your enemies have their war vessels for blockade. Did I understand you to say the military men have come for your friend, the Federal Captain? What a pity! He danced so well!”
And with the careless smile still on her lips, she passed them and crossed the hall to the library.
Evilena shook her head and sighed. “I am just broken hearted over his arrest,” she acknowledged, “but it is because––well, it is not merely because he was a good dancer! Gertrude, I––I did something horrid this morning, I just could not eat my breakfast without showing my sympathy in some way. You know those last cookies I baked? Well, I had some of those sent over with his breakfast.”
“Poor fellow!” and Delaven shook his head sadly over the fate of Monroe. Evilena eyed him suspiciously; but his face was all innocence and sympathy.
“It is terrible,” she assented; “poor mama just wept this morning when we heard of it; of course, if he really proves to be a spy, we should not care what happened to him; but mama thinks of his mother, and of his dead brother, and––well, we both prayed for him this morning; it was all we could do. Kenneth says no one must go near him, and of course Kenneth knows what is best; but we are both hoping with all our hearts that he had nothing to do with that spy; funny, isn’t it, that we are praying and crying on account of a man who, after all, is a real Yankee?”
“Faith, I’d turn Yankee myself for the same sweet sympathy,” declared Delaven, and received only a reproachful glance for his frivolity.
Judithe crossed the hall to the library, the indifferent smile still on her lips, her movements graceful and unhurried; under the curious eyes of Gertrude Loring she would show no special interest in the man under discussion, or the guard just arrived, but for all that the arrival of the guard determined her course. All her courage was needed to face the inevitable; the inevitable had arrived, and she was not a coward.
She looked at the wedding ring on her finger; it had been the wedding ring of the dowager long ago, and she had 360 given it to Kenneth McVeigh that morning for the ceremony.
“Maman would approve if she knew all,” she assured herself, and now she touched the ring to remind her of many things, and to blot out the remembrance of others, for instance, the avowal of love under the arbor in the dusk of the night before!