but she's owner of Ballymacshane?"

Asgill's face was dark with passion, but "Goodnight" Flavia repeated
coldly. And this time the displeasure in her tone silenced the Major.
The two men went on to their rooms, though Asgill's hands itched to be
at the other's throat. A moment later two doors closed sharply.

Flavia remained in the darkness of the passage, but she no longer
listened--she thought. Presently she went back to her room.

There, when the door had closed upon her, she continued to stand and to
think. And the blush which the Major's insinuation had brought to her
cheek still burned there. It was natural that Payton's words should
direct her thoughts more closely and more intimately to the man outside
whose door he had found her; nor less natural that she should institute
a comparison between the two, should picture the manner of the one and
the manner of the other, should consider how the one had treated her in
an abnormal crisis, when he had held her struggling in his arms, when
in her despair she had beaten his face with her hands, when, after her
attempt on his life, he had subdued her by sheer force; and how the
other had treated her in the few hours he had known her! And so
comparing, she could not but find in the one a nobility, in the other
a--a dreadfulness. For, looking back, and having Payton's words and
manner fresh in her mind, she had to own that, in all his treatment of
her, Colonel Sullivan, while opposing and thwarting her, had still, and
always, respected her.

Strange to say, she could not now understand, much less could she
sustain, that rage against him which had before carried her to such
lengths. What had he done? How had he wronged her? She could find no
sufficing answer. A curtain had fallen between the past and the
present. Long years, it seemed to her, had elapsed, so that she could
now see things in their due proportions and with a clear sight. The
rising? It stood on a sudden very distant, very dim, a thing of the
past, an enterprise lofty and romantic, but hopeless. She supposed that
he had seen it in that light all through, and that for acting on what
he saw she had hated him. The contemptuous words in which he had
denounced it rang again in her ears, but they no longer kindled her
resentment; they convinced. As one recovering from sickness looks back
on the delusions of fever, Flavia reviewed the hopes and aspirations of
the past month. She saw now that it was not in that remo