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.

She cast on him a momentary look of perfect indifference, as she might
on any one that stood in her way; then walked lightly to the spinet,
giving him a barely noticeable wide berth in passing, as if he were
something with which it was probably desirable not to come in contact.
Her slight deviation from a direct line of progress, though made
inoffensively, struck