“Why, Jacquelin! You here all by yourself!” she exclaimed. She bent over him quickly to prevent his rising for her. Had Jacquelin been cool enough to note her voice it might have saved him; but he was not even looking at her. His manner hauled her up short, and the next instant hers had changed. She seated herself and tried for a few moments to be light and divert him. She told of the episode at the ford. Jacquelin, however, was not to be diverted, and, taking the silence which presently fell on her for a confession, he began to assume a bolder tone, and proceeded to take her to task for her conduct. “It was an outrage—an outrage on—Steve. It was shameful,” he said, “that with such a man as Steve offering his heart to her, she should be boldly encouraging a Yankee officer, so that everybody in the county was talking about it.” It was when he said it was an outrage on Steve that the explosion came. Blair was on her feet in a second. “Jacquelin!” she exclaimed, with a gasp. The next second she had found her voice. He had never seen her as she became. It was a new Blair standing above him, tall and straight in the dusk, her frame trembling, her voice vibrating. She positively flamed with indignation, not because of the charge, but against him for making it. “Whose business is it?” she asked him, with glowing cheeks and flashing eyes. If her father and mother did not object, had he a right to interfere? If Steve were not satisfied, could not he take care of himself? Who had given him such a right? And before Jacquelin could recover from his surprise, she had burst into tears and rushed into the house. Jacquelin drove home in black despair. He had been put wholly in the wrong, and yet he felt that he had had right originally on his side. His whole past appeared suddenly rooted up; his whole future destroyed by this new-comer, this hostile interloper. How he would love to have some cause of personal quarrel with him! How gladly he would put it all to the test of one meeting. Yet what had Middleton done but win fairly! and he had been a gentleman always. Jacquelin was forced to admit this. But oh! if he only had a just cause of quarrel! Let him look out hereafter. But—if he were to meet him and he should fall, what would be the consequence? He would only have ruined Blair’s happiness and have destroyed his only hope. He almost ground his teeth at his helplessness as he drove home through the dusk. He did not know that at that moment Blair Cary, with locked door, was sobbing in her little white-curtained room, her anger no longer turned against him, but against herself.