"Then do I this minute forswear their friendship, for to stay from you would be to remain outside of Paradise. Only tell me one thing,--you did not hate me for the news I wrote you of Barry?" "Nay, it was the one of your letters I felt drawn to answer." He took her unresisting hand and kissed it softly. "If you loved him, I would I had died in his place." And then again that silence fell between them, while at his heart was biting that most helpless of all jealousy--the jealousy of the dead. Against a living rival one may contend with hope; but when that on which the heart is set has come to be but a memory, incapable of blunder or cruelty, the contest becomes useless, or pitifully unequal. Yearningly Richard's eyes studied the face before him, and yet he would not ask her the question that burned in his heart. Some day she would tell him the truth of her own accord; until then he must wait and suffer. His return, she foresaw, was to be to her at once a relief and an embarrassment, for she would not consent to his making public her share in his escape of the winter, lest it look like a plea on her part for a cessation of hostilities. "I have held my own against them all these years; I will not ask for any terms, now that the end has come, and my side has gone down in defeat," she said. "But, Joscelyn, think how they would adore you for such a service to their country! My information was most useful to General Greene." "I did it not for sake of their country." "Well, then, for sake of their countryman. They love me, if you do not." He leaned toward her laughing, yet pleading; and she noted how honest and pleasant were his eyes. But she held to her point against all of his arguments; and so he was feign to yield except in regard to his mother; there he was firm. "I never dreamed but that she knew, for the quick movements of the last campaign left no time for letters to reach me from home. Had I not thought you would tell her as soon as the British were well out of town, I should have asked a furlough, and come home to set you right. To think what you have suffered for saving my poor life!" And so it was that half an hour later Mistress Clevering came hastily in without the ceremony of knocking, and taking Joscelyn in her arms,--to Mistress Cheshire's amazement,--said many grateful and affectionate things. "When I think of what you have done for us, I am bowed down with humiliation for the cruelty with which I have requited you. Oh, my dear, my dear! had you only told me and your mother at the time, things would have been very different." "Yes," answered the girl, demurely, "so different that Master Clevering's life would have paid the penalty of his daring. Nay, it was a game at which only one could play with safety. You could have done naught but share my anxiety, and that were no help."