"It is a matter of liberty, and life itself," he said. "But I do not care for either,--I deprecate the reflections on my character as a soldier." He hesitated for one moment, then broke out with sudden passion, "I care for the jeopardy of my honor--my sacred honor!" There was an interval of stillness so long that a slant of the sunset light might seem to have moved on the floor. The soft babble of the voices of the children came in at the open window; the mocking-bird's jubilance rose from among the magnolia blooms outside. The great bowl on the table was full of roses, and she eyed their magnificence absently, seeing nothing, remembering all that Ashley had said, and realizing how difficult it would be to convince even him, with all his friendly good-will, of the simplicity of the motives that had precipitated the real events, so grimly metamorphosed in the monstrous mischances of war. "Oh--" she cried suddenly, with a poignant accent, "that this should have fallen upon you in the house of your friends! We can never forgive ourselves, and you can never forgive us!" "There is nothing to forgive," he said heartily; "I have no grievance against this kind roof. I could not expect Judge Roscoe to betray his own son, and deliver him up to capture, to death as a spy--because I happened to be here, a temporary guest. And I could not expect the young man to voluntarily surrender--for my convenience. No--I blame no one." "You are magnanimous!" exclaimed Mrs. Gwynn, her luminous gray eyes shining through tears as she looked at him. "Only omniscience could have foreseen and guarded against this disastrous complication of adverse circumstances. But the results are serious enough to justify doubt and provoke investigation. Knowing the simple truth, it seems a little difficult to see how it can fail to be easily established--it is the imputation that afflicts me. I am not used to contemplate myself as a traitor--with my motives." "Oh, it is so unjust--so rancorously untrue! You arrested him the moment you saw him--although he was in Judge Roscoe's house. You must have known that he was Judge Roscoe's son." "I recognized him from his portrait--" Baynell checked himself. He would not have liked to say how often, with what jealous appraisement of its manly beauty and interest of suggestion, he had studied the portrait of Julius on the parlor wall, knowing him as a man who had loved Leonora Gwynn, and fearing him as a man whom possibly Leonora Gwynn loved. "But I was obliged to arrest him on the spot--why, I was in honor bound."