_Mait_. This brother I say, quarrelled with me, though I had borne from him unresentingly, what from another would have seemed insult. We quarrelled at last, and the house was closed against me, or would have been had I sought access; for I walked sternly by its pleasant door that afternoon, though I remember now how the very roses that o'erhung the porch, the benched and shaded porch, that lovely lingering place, seemed to beckon me in. It was a breathless summer day, and the vine curled in the open window,--even now those lowly rooms make a brighter image of heaven to me than the jewelled walls that of old grew in the pageant of our sabbath dreams. _Andre_. And thus you abandoned your love? A quarrel with her brother? _Mait_. I never wronged her with the shadow of a doubt. Directly, that same day, I wrote to her to fix our meeting elsewhere, that we might renew our broken plans in some fitter shape for the altered times. She sent me a few lines of grave refusal, Sir; and the next letter was returned unopened. _Andre_. 'Twas that brother! Pshaw! 'twas that brother, Maitland. I'll lay my life the lady saw no word of it. _Mait_. I might have thought so too, perchance; but that same day,--the morning had brought the news from Boston,--I met her by chance, by the spring in the little grove where we first met; and--Good Heavens! she talked of brothers! Brothers, mother, sisters!--What was their right to mine? All that the round world holds, or the universe, what could it be to her?--that is, if she had loved me ever; which, past all doubt, she never did. _Andre_. Maitland! Heavens, how this passion blinds you! And you expected a gentle, timid girl like that to abandon all she loved. Nay, to make her home in the very camp, where death and ruin unto all she loved, was the watchword? _Mait_. I beg your pardon, Sir. I looked for no such thing. I offered to renounce my hopes of honor here for her; a whole life's plans, for her sake I counted nothing. I offered her a home in England too, the very real of her girlhood's wish; my blighted fortunes since, or a home in yonder camp,--never, never. But if I had, ay, if I had,--that is not _love_, call it what you will, it is not love, to which such barriers were any thing. _Andre_. Oh well, a word's a word. That's as one likes. Only with your definition, give me leave to say, marvellous little love, Captain Maitland, marvellous little you will find in this poor world of ours. _Mait_. I'll grant ye. _Andre_. If there is any thing like it outside of a poet's skull, ne'er credit me. _Mait_. Strange it should take such shape in the creating thought and in the yearning heart, when all reality hath not its archetype. _Andre_. Hist! _Mait_. A careful step,--one of our party I fancy. _Andre_. 'Tis time we were at the rendezvous. If we have to recross the river as we came, on the stumps of that old bridge, we had best keep a little day-light with us, I think.