Now, and for the first time, Edith noticed Mr. Arrelsford, who had stepped back and away from her mother. She replied to his salutation with a cold and distant bow. The man’s face flushed; he turned away. “But, mamma, the men outside,” persisted the girl. “Wait, my dear,” said her mother, taking her gently by the arm; “I must tell you something. It will be a great shock to you, I am afraid.” “What is it, mamma? Has father or——” “No, no, not that,” said Mrs. Varney. “A man we have trusted as a friend has shown himself a conspirator, a spy, a traitor.” “Who is it?” cried the girl, at the same time instinctively divining—how or why she could not tell, and that thought smote her afterward—to whom the reference was being made. Mrs. Varney naturally hesitated to say the name. Arrelsford, carried away by his passion for the girl and his hatred for Thorne, was not so reticent. He stepped toward her. “It is the gentleman, Miss Varney, whose attentions you have been pleased to accept in the place of mine,” he burst out bitterly. His manner and his meaning were unmistakable. The girl stared at him with a white, haughty face, in spite of her trembling lips. Mechanically she thrust the envelope with the commission into her belt, and confronted the man who loved her and whom she did not love, who accused of this hateful thing the man whom, in the twinkling of an eye, she realised she did love. Then the daughter turned to her mother. “Is it Mr Arrelsford who makes this accusation?” she asked. “Yes,” said Arrelsford, again answering for Mrs. Varney, “since you wish to know. From the first I have had my suspicions about this——” But Edith did not wait for him to finish his sentence. She turned away from him with loathing, and moved rapidly toward the front window. “Where are you going!” asked Arrelsford. “For Captain Thorne.” “Not now,” he said peremptorily. The colour flamed in the girl’s cheek again. “Mr. Arrelsford, you have said something to me about Captain Thorne. Are you afraid to say it to him?” “Miss Varney,” answered Arrelsford hotly, “if you—if you——” “Edith,” said Mrs. Varney, “Mr. Arrelsford has good reasons for not meeting Captain Thorne now.” “I should think he had,” returned the girl swiftly; “for a man who made such a charge to his face would not live to make it again.” “My dear, my dear,” said her mother, gently but firmly, “you don’t understand, you don’t——” “Mamma,” said the girl, “this man has left his desk in the War Department so that he can have the pleasure of persecuting me.” Both the mother and the rejected suitor noticed her identification of herself with Captain Thorne in the pronoun “me,” one with sinking heart and the other with suppressed fury. “He has never attempted anything active in the service before,” continued Edith, “and when I ask him to face the man he accuses, he turns like a coward!” “Mrs. Varney, if she thinks——”