She turned to regard him. "What have you done?" she asked soberly. "Showed him your letter." "Stephen!" she gasped as she drew back. Neither spoke. He continued to smile at her apparent concern, while she stared at him. "Do you mean it?" she asked; then quickly--"or are you teasing?" "I did. I showed the letter to him, and asked if I might return to you." "He read it?" "There! There! I am joking. He did not read it, but I did have it in my hand, and I told him about you and that I was going back to take you with me." Satisfied, she allowed herself to assume a more relaxed composure. "You are going to destroy it, aren't you?" He took it from his pocket and looked at it. She, too, glanced at it, and then at him. "May I keep it? I treasure every word of it, you know." "Did you but know how it was composed, you might ridicule me." "I suppose you closed yourself behind some great veil to shut out the world from your view. Your mind toiled with thought until you were resolved upon the heroic. There was no scheme nor formula; your quill ran on and on in obedience to the flood of ideas which inspired it." She lapsed into meditation; but she recovered herself immediately. "No," she shook her head slowly though steadily. "At midnight with the aid of a little candle which burned itself out quite before the end." He looked up sharply. "That night?" She nodded. He put his arms around her and drew her close. She made no resistance, but allowed herself to fall into his embrace. "Marjorie!" he whispered. She yielded both her hands to his grasp and felt them compressed within it. "You were not hurt at my seeming indiscretion?" "I told you in my letter that I was not." "Then you do love me?" She drew back a little as if to glance at him. "You know that I do," was the soft, reassuring answer. "Won't you let me hear you say it?" he pleaded. Reaching out, she put both arms about him and offered her lips to his, whispering at the same time only what he was destined to hear. Presently the old clock began to strike the hour of five. CHAPTER VI I "Father! Father! Where are you? Arnold has betrayed! He has betrayed his country!" Breathless, Marjorie rushed into the hallway, leaving the door ajar behind her. It was late in the afternoon of a September day. The air was soft and hazy, tempered with just the chill of evening that comes at this time of the year before sundown. More than two months had passed, months crowded with happiness which had filled her life with fancy. Her engagement to Captain Meagher had been announced, quietly and simply; their marriage was to take place in the fall. Day after day sped by and hid themselves in the records of time until the event, anxiously awaited, yet equally dreaded, was but a bare month distant. It would be a quiet affair after all, with no ostentation or display; but that would in no wise prevent her from looking her prettiest.