house that he
could not accept anything from the Boompointer influence, and that his
interview with Susy was fruitless, he knew that he must temporize. While
he did not believe that his old playmate would willingly betray him, he
was uneasy when he thought of the vanity and impulsiveness which might
compromise him--or of a possible jealousy that might seek revenge. Yet
he had no reason to believe that Susy's nature was jealous, or that she
was likely to have any cause; but the fact remained that Miss Faulkner's
innocent intrusion upon their tete-a-tete affected him more strongly
than anything else in his interview with Susy. Once out of the
atmosphere of that house, it struck him, too, that Miss Faulkner was
almost as much of an alien in it as himself. He wondered what she
had been doing there. Could it be possible that she was obtaining
information for the South? But he rejected the idea as quickly as it
had occurred to him. Perhaps there could be no stronger proof of the
unconscious influence the young girl already had over him.

He remembered the liveries of the diplomatic carriage that had borne her
away, and ascertained without difficulty that her sister had married one
of the foreign ministers, and that she was a guest in his house. But he
was the more astonished to hear that she and her sister were considered
to be Southern Unionists--and were greatly petted in governmental
circles for their sacrificing fidelity to the flag. His informant, an
official in the State Department, added that Miss Matilda might have
been a good deal of a madcap at the outbreak of the war--for the sisters
had a brother in the Confederate service--but that she had changed
greatly, and, indeed, within a month. "For," he added, "she was at the
White House for the first time last week, and they say the President
talked more to her than to any other woman."

The indescribable sensation with which this simple information filled
Brant startled him more than the news itself. Hope, joy, fear, distrust,
and despair, alternately distracted him. He recalled Miss Faulkner's
almost agonizing glance of appeal to him in the drawing-room at Susy's,
and it seemed to be equally consistent with the truth of what he had
just heard--or some monstrous treachery and deceit of which she might be
capable. Even now she might be a secret emissary of some spy within
the President's family; she might have been in correspondence with some
traitor in the Boompointer