,
burning with resentment that you should dare imperil my design, I
searched your chamber to destroy the letter you had threatened warning
the Oneidas of their coming punishment. How can you blame me if I took
this lady's playful jest for something else?"

"I do not blame you, Captain Butler," I said disdainfully.

"Then may we not resume an intercourse as entertaining as it was full
of profit to myself?"

"Time heals--but Time must not be spurred too hard," I answered,
watching him.

His stealthy eyes dropped as he inclined his head in acquiescence.

Then Sir Peter spoke, frankly, impetuously, his good heart dictating
ever to his reason; and what he said was amiable and kind, standing
there, his sweet lady's arm resting on his own. And she, too, spoke
graciously but gravely, with a gentle admonition trailing at the end.

But when he turned to Elsin Grey, she softened nothing, and her gesture
committed him to silence while she spoke: "End now what you have said
so well, nor add one word to that delicate pyramid of eloquence which
you have raised so high to your own honor, Captain Butler. I am
slow-witted and must ask advice from that physician, Time, whom Mr.
Renault, too, has called in council."

"Am I, then, banished?" he asked below his breath.

"Ask yourself, Mr. Butler. And if you find no reply, then I shall
answer you."

All eyes were on her. What magic metamorphosis had made this woman from
a child in a single night! Where had vanished that vague roundness of
cheek and chin in this drawn beauty of maturity? that untroubled eye,
that indecision of caprice, that charming restlessness, that childish
confidence in others, accepting as a creed what grave lips uttered as a
guidance to the lesser years that rested lightly on her?

And Walter Butler, too, had noted some of this, perplexed at the
reserve, the calm self-confidence, the unimagined strength and cold
composure which he had once swayed by his passion, as a fair and
clean-stemmed sapling tosses in tempests that uproot maturer growth.

His furtive, unconvinced eyes sought the floor as he took his leave
with every ceremony due himself and us. Dawn already whitened the east.
He mounted by the tavern window, and I saw him against the pallid sky
in silhouette, riding slowly toward the city, Jessop beside him, and
their horses' manes whipping the rising sea-wind from the west.

"What a nightmare this has been!" whispered Lady Coleville, her
husband's h