To this Isabey made no reply; but his agitation, although well mastered, could not be wholly concealed.
Angela rose to her feet, and Isabey rose also. Facing each other, she said to him in a voice which she vainly endeavored to make calm: “There is some mystery about this which must be explained to me. Tell me the truth, and tell me all the truth.”
There was no gainsaying this, and Isabey, unconscious that he called her by her first name, replied: “Angela, since you command me, I must tell you the truth. There is a cruel and most unjust suspicion abroad against you. The people in the county think and say that you are conveying information from the Confederate side to your husband.”
Angela straightened up her slender figure and smiled contemptuously. “Is that all?” she asked. “Then it is very easily disproved. What do I know about military matters? Who speaks of them before me? If I told all I knew, or have ever known, it would be nothing.”
“So I believe; but the capture of Colonel Gratiot gave rise to these reports, and the coming of the gunboat up the river the night that General Farrington was expected to be at Harrowby was an unfortunate coincidence. General Farrington sent for me last night and told me that you must be escorted within the Federal lines, and at once. I asked him why I, whose family had received such kindness from the Harrowby family, should be required to do this hateful duty, and he told me that it could be done with least publicity if it were in my hands.”
Angela remained silent for a few minutes, looking down. She was revolving things in her mind and Isabey, who had a high opinion of her natural good sense, did not interrupt her consideration of the position.
“It would be best,” she said, after a pause, “that I go quietly with you, letting everyone in this house think that you bring me a command from my husband. It is by far the best, that you will go with me to the Federal lines. Yes, oh, more than that—stay with me until you can give me into Neville’s hands. I implore you!” She clasped her hands and looked, with eyes dark and full of sudden tears, at Isabey. After all, she was but twenty and had lived a life almost as secluded as Miranda upon her solitary isle, and the thought of being left alone with strangers had in it for the moment something terrifying to her.
“I wish it could be so,” replied Isabey, his heart in his eyes. “But I am afraid—I am afraid it cannot be. It will only be a question of a day or two.”
“How shall we travel?”
“On horseback; you don’t mind a twenty-mile ride, do you?”