"I am not nameless; I only ask leave to withhold my name until I have told one or two other things." "But you don't mind confessing you're an out-and-out rebel sympathizer?" Under the broad-brimmed hat her smile grew to a sparkle. "No, I enjoy it." The chief-of-staff smiled, but the General darkened and pressed his questions. At length he summed up. "So, then, you wish me to believe that you did all you did, and now have come into our lines at a most extraordinary and exhausting speed and running the ugliest kinds of risks, in mere human sympathy for a dying stranger, he being a Union officer and you a secessionist of"--a courtly bow--"the very elect; that's your meaning, is it not?" "No, General; in the first place, I am not one of any elect." A flattering glimmer of amusement came into the two men's faces, but some change in Charlotte's manner arrested it and brought an enhanced deference. "In the second place, I am not here merely on this errand." "Oh!" "No, General. And in the last place, my motive in this errand is no mere sympathy for any one person; I am here from a sense of public duty--" The speaker seemed suddenly overtaken by emotions, dropped her words with pained evenness, and fingered the lace handkerchief in her lap. "Pardon," interrupted the General, "the sunlight annoys you. Major, will you drop that curtain?" "Thank you. One thing I am here for, General, is to tell you something, and I have to begin by asking that neither of you will ever say how you learned it." The two men bowed. "Thank you. Please understand, also, I have never uttered this but to one friend, a lady. There was no need; I have not wanted aid or counsel, even from friends. But I feel duty bound to tell it to you, now, because, for one thing, the brave soldier who wore that sword--" Her eyes rose to the weapon and fell again; she bit her lip. "Yes--well--what of him?" "He was lured to disaster and death by a man whose supreme purpose was, and is to-day, revenge upon me. That man drew him to his ruin purely in search of my life." Charlotte sat with her strange in-looking, out-looking gaze holding the gaze of her questioner until for relief he spoke. "Why, young lady, it's hard to doubt anything you say, but really that sounds rather fanciful. Why should you think it?" "I do not think it, I know it. He sends me his own assurance of it by his own father, so that his revenge may be fuller by my knowing daily and hourly that he is on my trail." "And you appeal to me for protection?" She smiled. "No. I am not seeking to divert his fury from myself, but to confine it to myself. Fancy yourself a human-hearted woman, General, and murder being done day by day because you are alive." "Oh, this is incredible! What is its occasion, its origin? How are you in any way responsible?" "Why, largely I am not. Yet in degree I am, General, because of shortcomings of mine--faults--errors--that--oh--that have their bearing in the case, don't you see?"