nt away, engaged to me, twenty-five years ago, and never let
me set eyes on you since--of how I wore black for you, thinking you were
killed in the war, till I heard that you had deserted. I took off that
mourning quick, I can tell you! I thought you were fighting on the wrong
side; yet if you had a good reason for being there, you should have staid
and fought so long as there was breath in you. And if I was to tell them
here that you haven't a particle of right to wear that blue suit that
looks like a uniform, and that you were no more 'captain' of anything than
I am--well, I guess Lorena Jane wouldn't have much to say to you, though
maybe Mr. Overton would."

He grew actually pale as he listened. His fear of some one overhearing her
was as great as his own mortification.

"But you--you won't tell--will you, Lavina?" he said pleadingly. "I
haven't done any harm! I--"

"Harm! Alf Leek, you never had enough backbone to do either harm or help
to any one in this world. But don't you suppose you did me harm when you
spoiled me for ever trusting any other man?"

"I--I would have come back, but I thought you'd be married," he said, in a
feeble, hopeless way.

"Likely that is now, ain't it?" she demanded. And, woman-like, now that
she had reduced him to meekness and humiliation, she grew a shade less
severe, as if pretty well satisfied. "I had other things to think of
besides a husband."

"You won't tell--will you, Lavina? I'll tell you how it all happened, some
day. Then I'll leave this country."

"You'll not," she contradicted. "You'll stay right here as long as I do,
and I won't tell just so long as you keep from trying to make Lorena Jane
believe how great you are. But at the first word of your heroic actions,
or the cultured society you were always used to--"

"You'll never hear of them," he said eagerly, "never. I knew you wouldn't
make trouble, Lavina, for you always were such a good, kind-hearted
girl."

He offered his hand to her, sheepishly, and she gave it a vixenish slap.

"Don't try any of your skim-milk praise on me," she said, tartly. "Huh!
You, that Lorena thought was a pillar of cultured society! When, the Lord
knows, you wouldn't have known how to read the addresses on your own
letters if I hadn't taught you!"

He moved to the door in a crestfallen manner, and stood there a moment,
moistening his lips, and apparently swallowing words that could not be
uttered.

"That's so, Lavina," he said, at