The octogenarian looked surprisedly at the cloak, then at Elizabeth, then mildly asked her if she had seen his pipe.
“Oh, the cowardly wretch!” was Elizabeth’s answer, her feelings forcing a release in speech.
“What, me?” asked the old man, startled, not yet having thought to connect her words with his last interview with the American officer. He looked at her for a moment, but, receiving no satisfaction, calmly refilled, from a leather pouch, his pipe, which he had found on the mantel.
Elizabeth’s thoughts began to take more distinct shape, and, in order to formulate them the more accurately, she spoke them aloud to the old man, finding it an assistance to have a hearer, though she supposed him unable to understand.
“Yet he wasn’t a coward that evening he rode to attack the Hessians,—nor when he was wounded,—nor when he stood here waiting to be taken! He was no coward then, was he, Mr. Valentine?” Getting no answer, and irritated at the old man’s owl-like immovability, she repeated, with vehemence, “Was he?”
Mr. Valentine had, by this time, begun to put things together in his mind.
“No. To be sure,” he chirped, and then lighted his pipe with a small fagot from the fireplace, an operation that required a good deal of time.
Elizabeth now spoke more as if to herself. “Perhaps, after all, I may be wrong! Yes, what a fool, to forget all the proofs of his courage! What a blind imbecile, to think him afraid! It must be that he acts from a delicate conception of honor. He would not encroach where another had the prior claim. He considers Colden in the matter. That’s it, don’t you think?”
“Of course,” said Valentine, blindly, not having paid attention to this last speech, and sitting down in his armchair.