"I think my wound has undergone a slight relapse. You shall see, at least, I am not afraid of your champion." "If that is your only reason,--your desire to quarrel with Major Colden,--I cannot invite you to remain." "Well, then, to tell the truth, there _is_ another reason. When I said, a while since, I had never seen you in that gown, I used too many words. I should have said I had never really seen you at all." "Where were your eyes?" she asked, absently, seeming to take his words literally and to perceive no compliment. "I was in a kind of waking sleep." "It has been a time and place of hallucinations, I think. I, too, sir, have been, since I came here a week ago, under the strangest spell. A kind of light madness or witchery was over me, and made me act ridiculously, against my very will. A week ago, when you were disabled, I intended to give you up to the British,--as I should do now, if it would not be so troublesome--" "'Twould be troublesome to _me_, I assure you," he said, interrupting. "But at the last moment," she went on, "I did precisely the reverse of what I wished. Awhile ago, in this room, I seemed to be in the possession of some evil spirit, which made me say preposterous things. I can only remember some wild raving I indulged in, and some undeserved rudeness I displayed towards you. But, will you believe, the instant you left me, I recovered my right mind. I am like one returned from bedlam, cured, and you will pardon any incivility I may have done you in my peculiar state, I'm sure, since you speak of having been curiously afflicted yourself." "Then you mean," he faltered, "you did not really love me?" "Why, certainly I did not! How could you think I did? Something possessed my will. But, thank heaven, I am myself again. Why, sir, how could I? You know very little of me, sir, to think--Oh!" She covered her face with her hands. "What things must I have said and done, in my clouded state, to make you think that! You,--an enemy, a rebel, a person whose only possible interest to me arises from his enmity!" Dazzled as he was by her newly discovered beauty, the imposition on him was complete. He saw this covetable being now indifferent to him, out of his power to possess, likely soon to pass into the possession of another. "Pray try to forget awhile that enmity," he supplicated. "I shall try, and then you can have no interest for me at all." "Then don't try, I beg. I'd rather have an interest for you as an enemy than not at all." "Why, really, sir--" She seemed half puzzled, half amused. "Lord," quoth he, "how I have been deluded! I thought my love-making that night, feigned though it was, had wakened a response." "Love-making, do you say? Will you believe me, sir, I don't remember what passed here that night, save the unaccountable ending,--my making you my guest instead of their prisoner." "I wish you were pretending all this!" "Why, if 'twould make you happier that I were, I wish so, too."