He sat down inside the Rosemont grounds and bared his feverish brow to the cool, fragrant night. In the stillness a whip-poor-will called from a thicket in its eerie voice, and another replied so near at hand that he started with an uncanny thrill.
"I shall get the dismals if I stay here," rising impatiently. "Heigho! I wish I had never come to Rosemont, never met this romantic little maiden with her silly love-tests and her abominable coquetries! Well, I am done with her forever. But what would my friends all say if they knew that Earle Winans had been vanquished by a little village beauty? And how am I to keep it from Lord Chester?"
He flushed hotly out there in the dark, for he detested ridicule.
"I must swear Chester to secrecy," he decided. "Ah, how I wish I had never come down to Virginia! I'll leave here to-morrow, and go abroad again in a week. That is," with a start, "if I am alive to-morrow."
For he had suddenly remembered that at sunrise to-morrow he was to fight a duel with pistols with Jack Tennant, who had declined to apologize for his hasty blow at the picnic.
[CHAPTER XIX.]
"THE WOMAN I LOVED AND THE MAN THAT WAS ONCE MY MORTAL FOE!"
"What pulls at my heart so?
What tells me to roam?
What drags me and lures me
From chamber and home?"—Goethe.