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His eyes, dilated with horror at the realization of the older man's admission, fixed their gaze accusingly on James Thorold. "You weren't a a deserter?" He breathed the word fearfully. "I was a bounty-jumper." "Oh!" Peter Thorold's shoulders drooped as if under the force of a vital blow. Vaguely as he knew the term, the boy knew only too well the burden of disgrace that it carried.
Thorold; feeling beneath all my gladness that now was my time and my only time for doing all the difficult work I had set myself. But gladness was uppermost, as I found myself in the saddle and away, with Mr. Thorold by my side; for once free and alone together; gladness that kept us both still I think; for we exchanged few words till we were clear of the city and out upon the open country.
"Well, sit down and tell us what you do know, and how to understand things," said Miss Cardigan. "I don't talk to anybody, much, about politics." So Thorold did as he was asked. He sat down on the other side of me, and with my hand in his, talked to us both.
The old house, famous beyond its own day for Judge Adams's friendship with Abraham Lincoln and the history-making sessions that the little group of Illinois idealists had held within its walls, loomed gray above the flowering shrubs, a saddening reminder of days that James Thorold must have known; but Thorold, glimpsing the place, turned away from it in a movement so swift as to betoken some resentment and gave heed instead to the long line of motors rolling smoothly toward the city's heart.
Noiselessly he tried the door. It was locked. He was smiling that merciless smile again in the darkness, as his deft, slim fingers worked at the keyhole. He was not too late this time! Old Jake was there, and yes, Thorold, too. They were even now haggling over the pendant he could hear them quite distinctly now with the door open a crack.
Yet it was impossible that we should write to each other without my parents' leave; and impossible that we should gain the leave. Mr. Thorold would have to see the matter as I looked at it; but a doubt came over me that to make him do so might prove difficult. That was one thing. Then about my not being an heiress. I suddenly found a great dislike in myself to speak to him on the subject.
We had hardly entered the bay of New York, and I had begun to discern familiar objects and to realise that I was in the same land with Mr. Thorold again, when a tormenting anxiety took possession of my heart. Now that I was near him, questions could be put off no longer. What tidings would greet me? and how should I get any tidings at all?
The story might be somehow untrue. Time would show. In the meanwhile, nothing but trust would have done honour to Mr. Thorold or to myself. I thought it was untrue. But suppose it were not, suppose that the joy of my life were gone, passed over to another; who had done it? By whose will was my life stripped?
The firelight fading and brightening: Thorold took care of the fire; the gleam of the gaslight on the rows of books; Miss Cardigan's comfortable figure gone to sleep in the corner of her chair; and the figure which ever and anon came between me and the fire, piling or arranging the logs of wood, and then paced up and down just behind me. There was no sleep for my eyes, of course.
"Aren't you my Daisy?" he said, looking down into my face with his flashing eyes, all alight with fire and pleasure. "But that " I began. "No evasions, Daisy. Answer. Aren't you mine?" I said "yes" meekly. But what other words I had purposed to add were simply taken off my lips. I looked round, in scared fashion, to see who was near; but Thorold laughed softly again.
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