"His cousin, Ellen Singleton, is such a beautiful woman--you remember Richard told us of her in his letter about the Philadelphia fête. Like Mary, he said, only more lovely. They must of necessity be much together, for she, too, is in New York." "And betrothed to Major Grant, you jealous child." "But that need really make no difference so far as Eustace's admiration goes. Besides, there must be others as lovely." "Of course; but you are pretty, too, when your face is not long and your eyes red with weeping." Betty went home comforted; and that night, when her mother made some sharp remark about the Singleton household, she plucked up courage to say it was scarcely fair to judge the whole family adversely because of the father's shortcomings. And then, scared at her own temerity, she ran away to her room, and cried out her trouble to that insensate and inanimate confessor of wronged or sorrowing womanhood,--her pillow. A week later, Joscelyn, coming from the Singletons', tied a red ribbon on her shutter as a sign that she had news; and Betty, hastening over, soon learned of Clinton's long and tempestuous voyage from New York to Charleston, whither he went to subdue that city. Eustace had been badly hurt in the storm that wrecked so many of the transports, and had been laid up in the hospital at Tybee Bay for weeks, while Clinton went on to Charleston to begin the siege. So the British had come again to the south to teach the people of that section their duty to their king, and the quiet that had reigned at Hillsboro' was broken by the coming and going of recruiting parties, and by the vacillating reports of victory or failure from the beleaguered city.