"I want to say--I want to ask you if you have no pity--if you have the cruelty to want another murder--if there is not blood enough already shed. Don't listen to what those men tell you," I hurried on, "don't believe them, when they say it is your duty. It is not! It is your duty to be merciful. It is your duty to leave vengeance to God. It is your duty to leave the miserable and the sinful to His justice, and not to hurry them before man's!" He looked down at me with a pity in his eyes that was almost divine. "You need not fear me," he said, turning from me; and descending the steps mounted his horse and rode slowly away. * * * * * "There are a few things," I overheard Kitty say to Frances outside my door, "in which I should be glad if my young lady was more like yours. Now there must be some comfort in dressing Miss Josephine, she cares about things; but all my work is thrown away, sometimes I think. My young lady has no heart for anything, never looks in the glass after I've taken all the pains in the world with her, and is just as likely to throw herself on the bed after her hair is fixed for dinner, as if she had a nightcap on. For the last two days," Kitty went on in a low tone, for Frances and she were very good friends now, "for the last two days she has been so miserable, it makes my heart ache to see her. And as for the masquerade to-night! she don't care _that_ for it. I've worked my fingers to the bone to get her dress ready, and like as not, she won't stay downstairs ten minutes after she gets it on. The whole house is thinking about nothing else, everybody is in such spirits about it, the young ladies are just crazy with their dresses and the fun they're going to have, while she, poor young thing, hardly knows or cares what she's to wear, and stays moping in her room all day by herself." "It's a hard thing to have one's young man away," said Frances in her soft voice, and with a little sigh that told she knew just how hard it was. Kitty didn't answer. I was afraid she would, and would tell her how inexplicable she found her mistress's moods. But Kitty was true to me, though she did love a little gossip, and let my _douleur_ pass for what she very shrewdly suspected it was not, and soon reverted to the all-absorbing subject of the masquerade. "Would you ever know the house!" she said, looking admiringly up and down the hall. "And doesn't the piazza look beautiful, and the hall. And just think how all those colored lamps will look when they're lighted. Really, I can't think what's got into master to take all this trouble, and turn the house inside out, to please a lot of young ladies that he doesn't care a straw for!" Frances opened her eyes as if this were heresy. Kitty went on with energy: "Miss Josephine Churchill needn't flatter herself that she's ever going to be more at home at Rutledge than she is now. I don't know a great deal, but I know enough to know that."