“I refer you to the Department, sir,” answered Thorne stubbornly. “By God, sir!” continued General Randolph hotly. “I will refer to the Department. Leave your men on guard there, Sergeant. Go over to the War Office. My compliments to the Secretary of War, and ask him if he will be so good as to——” But Arrelsford’s evil genius prompted him to interpose again. When affairs were going to his liking he should have let them alone, but fate seemed to be playing into his hand, and he determined to make the most of it and the chance. “Another witness! Miss Varney,” he cried triumphantly, as he bowed toward the window in which Edith had at that moment appeared. “She was here with me, she saw it all. Ask her.” General Randolph turned toward the window and in his turn bowed to the girl. “Miss Varney,” he asked courteously, “do you know anything about this?” “About what, sir?” answered Edith in a low voice. “Mr. Arrelsford claims that Captain Thorne is acting without authority in this office and that you can testify to that effect,” was the General’s answer. CHAPTER XV LOVE AND DUTY AT THE TOUCH Thorne’s case was now absolutely hopeless. By the testimony of two witnesses a thing is established. All that Arrelsford had seen Edith had seen. All that he knew, she knew. She had only to speak and the plan had failed; the cleverly constructed scheme would fall to pieces. His brother’s life would have been wasted, nay more, his own life also; for well did he realise that the bold way he had played the game would the more certainly hasten his immediate execution. A spy in the Confederate capital! He could reproach himself with nothing. He had done his very best. An ordinary man would have failed a dozen times in the struggle. Courage, adroitness, resourcefulness, and good fortune had carried him so far, but the odds were now heavily against him and nothing that he could do would avail him anything. The game was played and he had lost; Arrelsford had triumphed. Thorne, in the one word that Edith Varney was to speak, would lose life, honour, and that for which he had risked both. And he would lose more than that. He would lose the love of the woman who had never seemed so beautiful to him as she stood there, pale-faced, erect, the very incarnation of self-sacrifice, as were all the women of the Confederacy. And he would lose more than her love. He would lose her respect. His humiliation would be her humiliation. Never so long as she lived could her mind dwell on him with tenderness. The sound of his name would be a hissing and a reproach in her ear, his reputation a by-word and a shame. Her connection with him and that he had loved her would humiliate her only less than the fact that she had loved him.