When I reached the ruined gateway of Riverview, the old estate of the Blands', I quickened my pace, and went rapidly up the long drive to the front of the house, where I saw the glimmer of red firelight on the ivied window-panes in the west wing. As I ascended the steps, there was a sound on the gravel, and George Bolingbroke came around the corner of the house, in hunting clothes, with a setter dog at his heels. "Hello, Ben!" he remarked, half angrily. "So you've turned up, have you? Has there been another panic in the market?" "Is Sally here?" I asked. "I'm anxious about her." "Well, it's time you were," he answered. "Yes, she's inside." He stopped in the centre of the walk, and turning from the door, I came back and faced him in a silence that seemed alive with the beating of innumerable wings in the air. "Something's wrong, George," I said at last, breaking through my restraint. He looked at me with a calm, enquiring gaze while I was speaking, and by that look I understood, in an inspiration, he had condemned me. "Yes, something's wrong," he answered quietly, "but have you just found it out?" "I haven't found it out yet. What is it? What is the matter?" At the question his calmness deserted him and the dark flush of anger broke suddenly in his face. "The matter is, Ben," he replied, holding himself in with an effort, "that you've missed being a fool only by being a genius instead." Then turning away, as if his temper had got the better of him, he strode back through a clump of trees on the lawn, while I went up the steps again, and crossing the cold hall, entered the dismantled drawing-room, where a bright log fire was burning. Sally was sitting on the hearth, half hidden by the high arms of the chair, and as I closed the door behind me, she rose and stood looking at me with an expression of surprise. So had Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca looked in the firelight on that November afternoon when Sally and I had gone in together. "Why, Ben!" she said quietly, "I thought you were in Washington!" "I got home this morning and found your note. Sally, what is the trouble?" "You came after me?" "I came after you. The General went wild and imagined that there had been an accident, or George had run off with you." "Then the General sent you?" "Nobody sent me. I was leaving the house when he found me." She had not moved toward me, and for some reason, I still stood where I had stopped short in the centre of the room, kept back by the reserve, the detachment in her expression. "You came believing that George and I had gone off together?" she asked, and there was a faint hostility in her voice. "Of course I didn't believe it. I'm not a fool if I am an ass. But if I had believed it," I added passionately, "it would have made no difference. I'd have come after you if you'd gone off with twenty Georges." "Well, there's only one," she said, "and I did go off with him." "It makes no difference."