The arrival of the major anticipated that of Preston about a month, and when our hero returned, he found his rival almost domesticated at Mr. Mowbray’s house. Jealousy soon revealed to Preston the secret of his own long hidden love; but it made him heartily hate the major. The two gentlemen seemed perfectly to understand each other. But the Englishman knew better than his rival how to suppress his feelings, and accordingly possessed every advantage over him in superior ease and self-command. Had Kate wished otherwise, she could not but have given the larger share of her attention to the graceful, brilliant and composed man of fashion, rather than to his more irritable and wayward rival, whom a fancied slight, in word or look, was sufficient to make dumb for a whole evening. Depend on it, the worst possible use to which a lover can put himself is to be sulky. Perhaps it was the enmity he nourished against his more successful rival; perhaps it was the natural indignation of a frank and noble heart against oppression; perhaps, which is more natural, it was both combined, but Preston had not been long at home before he formed the resolution to take part with his countrymen in the war then going on; and the sudden appearance of General Marion on the Santee, where he began a partisan conflict with the invaders, opened to him a favorable way for carrying out his design, which he only postponed until he could part from Kate on better terms. He flattered himself that she herself was secretly on the side of the colonists, for her father had once held a commission under the provisional government, although since the fall of Charleston and the apparent conquest of the colony, he, like many others, had been induced to take a royal protection, and ground his arms as a neutral.