them. That sounds blasphemous, I know; but it is true. They are
doomed. But I can save them--and you can save them."

"And what is to become of me?" asked Virginia, calmly as before.

"Your future is entirely in your own hands. On the one side, what I have
promised. On the other----" Augustus thought he heard a crackling of
sticks, and looked around.

"On the other,"--Virginia took up the unfinished speech,--"the fate of a
friendless, fatherless, Union-loving woman in this chivalrous south! I
know how you treat such women. I know what awaits me on that side. And I
accept it. My friends can die. My father can die; and I can. All this I
accept; all the rest, you and your offers, I reject. I would not be your
wife to save the world. Because I not only do not love you, but because
I detest you. You have my answer."

With swelling breast and set teeth Augustus kept his eyes upon her for
full a minute, then replied, in a low voice shaken by passion,--

"I hoped your decision would be different. But it is spoken. I cannot
hope to change it?"

"Can you change these rocks under our feet with empty words?" she said,
with a white smile.

"All is over, then! Without cause you hate me, Miss Villars. Hitherto,
in all that has happened to you and your friends, I have been blameless.
If in the future I am not so, remember it is your own fault."

Then the fire flashed into Virginia's cheeks, and indignation rang in
her tones as she denounced the falsehood.

"Hitherto, in the wrong that has happened to me and my friends, you have
NOT been blameless! In the future you cannot do more to injure us than
you have already done, or meant to do. Look at me, and listen while I
prove what I say."

Again there was a slight noise in the thicket behind them, and he would
have been glad to make that an excuse for leaving her a moment; but her
spirit held him.

"I listen," he said, inwardly quaking at he knew not what.

"Do you remember the night my father was arrested?"

"I do."

"And how you that day took a journey to be away from us in our trouble?"

"I certainly took a short journey that day, but--" his eyes flickering
with the uneasiness of guilt.

"And do you remember a conversation you had with Lysander under a
bridge?"

His face suddenly flushed purple. "The villain has betrayed me!" he
thought. Then he stammered, "I hope you have not been listening to any
of that fellow's slanders!"

"You talked with Lysander under the