That meal offered no opportunity for the disclosure, the aunt being present throughout. Immediately after breakfast, the two ladies went for their customary walk. While they were breasting the wind, between two rows of box in the garden, Miss Sally spoke of Major Colden's intention to return for Elizabeth at the end of a week, and said, "'Twill be a week this evening since you arrived. Is he to come for you to-day or to-morrow?" "I don't know," said Elizabeth, shortly. "But, my dear, you haven't prepared--" "I sha'n't go back to-day, that is certain. If Colden comes before to-morrow, he can wait for me,--or I may send him back without me, and stay as long as I wish." "But he will meet Captain Peyton--" "It can be easily arranged to keep him from knowing Captain Peyton is here. I shall look to that." Miss Sally sighed at the futility of her inquisitorial fishing. Not knowing Elizabeth's reason for saving the rebel captain, she had once or twice thought that the girl, in some inscrutable whim, intended to deliver him up, after all. She had tried frequently to fathom her niece's purposes, but had never got any satisfaction. "I suppose," she went on, desperately, "if you go back to town, you will leave the captain in Williams's charge." "If I go back before the captain leaves," said Elizabeth, thereby dashing her amiable aunt's secretly cherished hope of affording the wounded officer the pleasure of her own unalloyed society. Elizabeth really did not know what she would do. Her actions, on Colden's return, would depend on the prior actions of the captain. No one had spoken to Peyton of her intention to leave after a week's stay. She had thought such an announcement to him from her might seem to imply a hint that it was time he should resume his wooing. That he would resume it, in due course, she took for granted. Measuring his supposed feelings by her own real ones, she assumed that her loveless betrothal to another would not deter Peyton's further courtship. She believed he had divined the nature of that betrothal. Nor would he be hindered by the prospect of their being parted some while by the war. Engagements were broken, wars did not last forever, those who loved each other found ways to meet. So he would surely speak, before their parting, of what, since it filled her heart, must of course fill his. But she would show no forwardness in the matter. She therefore avoided him till dinner-time. At the table he abruptly announced that, as duty required he should rejoin the army at the first moment possible, and as he now felt capable of making the journey, he would depart that night.