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There was a noise on the other side of the wall, and presently a head bobbed up. "Madame?" inquired the head. "Nothing. I wished to know if you were at your post." She turned to Maurice, who was puzzled to know what all this was preamble to. "Monsieur Carewe, I never forget details. I had an idea that when I submitted my proposals to you, you might be tempted to break your parole."
"Don't shoot, Colonel," exclaimed the youth, with a riotous fling of bare feet in the air, "I'll come down!" "You'll do it?" "Five!" he shouted, dancing upon the boards. "Five! I'll cross my heart to die I never hear tell of you, or ever knew they was sich a man in the world!" Carewe bent over him. "No!
Vanrevel was ordinarily so steady and cool that this was worth seeing, this berserker gesture; worth hearing, this wonderful profanity, like Washington's one fit of cursing; and Crailey, knowing Tom, knew, too, that it had not come upon him because Carewe had a daughter into whose eyes Tom had looked; nor did he rage because he believed that Crailey's life and his were in the greater hazard for the lack of every drop of water that should have issued from the empty nozzle.
By the merest accident, Tom was strolling near the Carewe place at the time; and when the carriage swung into the gates, with rattle and clink and clouds of dust at the finish, it was not too soon lost behind the shrubbery and trees for Tom to catch something more than a glimpse of a gray skirt behind a mound of flowers, and of a charming face with parted lips and dark eyes beneath the scuttle of an enormous bonnet.
With such promptitude and finish was he disposed of, that, had Miss Carewe been aware of his name and the condition wrought in him by the single stroke, she could have sought only the terse Richard of England for a like executive ability, "Off with his head! So much for Vanrevel!"
"A thousand devils!" exclaimed the Captain at the sight of this unexpected tableau. He sprang up, toppling over his chair. "What's this? Von Mitter? Blood? Have those damned students " "A brush on the lake road," interrupted Sharfenstein, breathlessly. "Help him over to a chair, Monsieur Carewe. That's it." "Have you a knife, Captain?" asked Maurice.
He retraced his steps, a tall, gray figure moving slowly through the blue darkness, and his lips formed the heart-sick shadow of a smile when he found that he had unconsciously turned into Carewe Street.
The elder Chenoweth was one of the gallant and kindly Southern colony that made it natural for Rouen always to speak of Miss Carewe as "Miss Betty". He was a handsome old fellow, whose hair, long moustache and imperial were as white as he was proud of them, a Virginian with the admirable Southern fearlessness of being thought sentimental.
Tom had thought it out the first night that the image of Miss Betty had kept him awake and that was the first night Miss Carewe spent in Rouen the St. Mary's girl would be sure to go to mass every day, which was why the window-ledge was dusted the next morning.
Was it a Valkyrie assuming that lovely likeness to perch upon this eyrie, waiting to bear their heroic souls to Valhalla, or was it Miss Betty Carewe? To the chief she spoke all of them agreed to that afterward but it was Crailey who answered, while Tom could only stare, and stand wagging his head at the lovely phantom, like a Mandarin on a shelf. "My mother in heaven!" gasped Crailey.
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