"It is terrible," she assented; "poor mama just wept this morning when we heard of it; of course, if he really proves to be a spy, we should not care what happened to him; but mama thinks of his mother, and of his dead brother, and--well, we both prayed for him this morning; it was all we could do. Kenneth says no one must go near him, and of course Kenneth knows what is best; but we are both hoping with all our hearts that he had nothing to do with that spy; funny, isn't it, that we are praying and crying on account of a man who, after all, is a real Yankee?" "Faith, I'd turn Yankee myself for the same sweet sympathy," declared Delaven, and received only a reproachful glance for his frivolity. Judithe crossed the hall to the library, the indifferent smile still on her lips, her movements graceful and unhurried; under the curious eyes of Gertrude Loring she would show no special interest in the man under discussion, or the guard just arrived, but for all that the arrival of the guard determined her course. All her courage was needed to face the inevitable; the inevitable had arrived, and she was not a coward. She looked at the wedding ring on her finger; it had been the wedding ring of the dowager long ago, and she had given it to Kenneth McVeigh that morning for the ceremony. "Maman would approve if she knew all," she assured herself, and now she touched the ring to remind her of many things, and to blot out the remembrance of others, for instance, the avowal of love under the arbor in the dusk of the night before! "But _that_ was last night," she thought, grimly; "the darkness made me impressionable, the situation made of me a nervous fool, who said the thing she felt and had no right to feel. It is no longer night, and I am no longer a fool! Do not let me forget, little ring, why I allowed you to be placed there. I am going to tell him now, and I shall need you and--Maman." So she passed into the library; there could be no further delay, since the guard had arrived; Monroe should not be sacrificed. She closed the door after her and looked around. A man was in the large arm chair by the table, but it was not Colonel McVeigh. It was Matthew Loring, whose man Ben was closing a refractory banging shutter, and drawing curtains over the windows, while Pluto brought in a lighted lamp for the table, and both of them listened stoically to Loring's grumbling. For a wonder he approved of the innovation of lamps and closed shutters. He had, in fact, come from his own room because of the fury of the storm. He growled that the noise of it annoyed him, but would not have acknowledged the truth, that the force of it appalled him, and that he shrank from being alone while the lightning threw threats in every direction, and the crashes of thunder shook the house. "No, Kenneth isn't here," he answered, grumpily. "They told me he was, but the nigger lied."