"It isn't going to be as hard as you think, perhaps," she smiled, bitterly, "to cast the man out of my heart. The man that I now know Donald Graves to be never was in my heart. There is no room, there, for a traitor."
She glanced out of the cab at the scene through which they were passing.
Jack Benson looked at the same time.
"I am terribly uneasy," she confessed. "Perhaps, even now, Mr. Benson, you had much better leave this carriage and let me go forward alone. I am a woman, and therefore safe. But I fear—yes, actually fear for your life when he finds out!"
"Don't be at all uneasy about me, Miss Huston," begged Jack, with cool confidence. "I have had rather a sturdy training in the art of taking care of myself."
Though he did not allow the girl to see the motion, Jack felt stealthily at his right hip pocket. Yes; the loaded revolver was there. Jack did not believe much in the practice of carrying concealed weapons. He had great contempt both for the nerve and the judgment of fool boys who carried revolvers, loaded or otherwise. But just now the situation was different. Jack Benson was an acting lieutenant in the United States Navy. Just before leaving the Navy Department he and his comrades had each been advised to take a proffered weapon and carry it against the chance that they might find Millard—or Graves—in Washington, and find themselves under the necessity of taking him prisoner.
"Spies and traitors are taken alive or dead," the official had remarked who had handed them the weapons.
"How much further have we to go?" Jack inquired, as the cab turned down a country lane.
"Only a very short distance, now," replied Daisy Huston.
"Jove, but she's a stunning girl for nerve and principle," thought Lieutenant Jack, admiringly. "She's going, now, to what must be the tragedy of her plans and hopes, yet she has her color back again, and looks as composed as though out only for an airing!"
"There is the house," almost whispered the girl, at last, resting a steady, cool hand on his arm.