"Mustn't what?" asked Peyton, surprised as much by her distracted eyes, panting nostrils, and heaving bosom, as by her act itself. "Mustn't go out this way. Mustn't open this door," she answered, wildly. He scrutinized her features, as if to test a sudden suspicion of madness. In a moment he threw off this conjecture as unlikely. "But," said he, putting forth his hand to grasp the knob of the door. "You mustn't, I say!" she cried. "I can't help it! Don't blame me for it! Don't ask me to explain, but you must not go out this way!" She stood by her task now from a new motive, one that impelled more strongly than her fear of being reproached and derided by Elizabeth. Her own self-esteem was enlisted, and she was now determined not to incur her own reproach and derision. She perceived, too, with a sentimental woman's sense of the dramatic, that, though denied a drama of her own in which she might figure as heroine, here was, in another's drama, a scene entirely hers, and she was resolved to act it out with honor. Circumstances had not favored her with a romance, but here, in another's romance, was a chapter exclusively hers, a chapter, moreover, on whose proper termination the very continuation of the romance depended. So she would hold that door, at any cost. Peyton regarded her for another moment of silence. "Oh, well," said he, at last, "I can go the other way." And, to her dismay, he strode towards the door of the east hall. She could not possibly outrun him thither. Her heart sank. The killing sense of failure benumbed her body. He was already at the door,--was about to open it. At that instant he stepped back into the parlor. In through the doorway, that he was about to traverse, came Elizabeth. CHAPTER XI. THE CONQUEST. Miss Sally saw at a glance that her niece was dressed for conquest; then, with immense relief and supreme exultation, but with a feeling of exhaustion, knowing that her work was done, she silently left the room by the door she had guarded, closed it noiselessly behind her, and went up-stairs to restore her worked-out energies. Elizabeth wore a blue satin gown, the one evening dress she had, in the possibility of a candle-light visit from the officers at the outpost, brought with her from New York. Her bare forearms, and the white surface surrounding the base of her neck, were thus for the first time displayed to Peyton's view. A pair of slender gold bracelets on her wrists set off the smoothness of her rounded arms, but she wore no other jewelry. She had not had the time or the facilities to have her hair built high as a grenadier's cap, but she looked none the less commanding. She was, indeed, a radiant creature. Peyton, having never before seen her at her present advantage, opened wide his eyes and stared at her with a wonder whose openness was excused only by the suddenness of the dazzling apparition.