man, but you've got to keep some faith with me as the representative of our house and of the cause which, as a Southern girl, should be first always in its claims."

Her heart fluttered, for his words suggested both knowledge and a menace. At the same time the scenes she had passed through, especially the last, lifted her so far above his plane of life that she shrunk from him with something very like contempt.

66

"Do you know what I have been writing?" she asked sternly.

"I neither know nor care. I only wish you to understand that you cannot trifle with me nor wrong me with impunity."

"Oh!" she cried, with a strong repellant gesture, "why can't you see and understand? You fairly make me loathe the egotism which, in scenes like these, can think only of self. As if I had either time or inclination to be trifling with you, whatever you mean by that. Brave men are dying heroically and unselfishly, thinking of others, while 'I, me and gallant wooing,' combined with vague threats against one whom you are in honor bound to protect, are the only words on your lips. How can you be so unmanly? What are you, compared with that noble old colonel whose last words I have just received? If you care a straw for my opinion, why are you so foolish as to compel me to draw comparisons? Do, for manhood's sake, forget yourself for once."

He was almost livid from rage as he replied harshly, "You'll rue these words!"

She looked at him scornfully as she said, "It's strange, but your words and expression remind me of Perkins. He might make you a good ally."

In his confusion and anger he blurted out, "Little wonder you think of him. You and that accursed nigger, Chunk

"Hush!" she interrupted in a low, imperious voice, "hush, lest as representative of our house you disgrace yourself beyond hope." And she passed quickly to her

room.

Within less than an hour he was asking himself in bitter self upbraiding, "What have I gained? What can I do? Prefer charges against my own cousin which I cannot prove? Impossible! Oh, I've been a fool again. I should have kept that knowledge secret till I could use it for a definite purpose. I'll break her spirit yet."

If he had seen her after she reached her room he might have thought it broken then. Vague dread of the consequences of an act which, from his words, she believed he knew far more about than he did, mingled with her anger and feelings of repugnance. "Oh," she moaned, "it was just horrible; it was coming straight down from the sublime to the contemptible. That noble old colonel took me to the very gate of heaven. Now I'm fairly trembling with passion and fear. Oh, why will Cousin Mad always stir up the very worst of my feelings! I'd rather suffer and die as poor Yarry did than marry a man who will think only of his little self at such a time as this!"

THE

CHAPTER XXVII.

AUN' JINKEY'S SUPREME TEST.

HE first long tragic day of hospital experience had so absorbed Miss Lou as to relegate into the background events which a short time before had been beyond her wildest dreams. In the utter negation of her life she had wished that something would happen, and so much had happened and so swiftly, that she was bewildered. The strangest thing of all was the change in herself. Lovers of the Whately and Maynard type could only repel by their tactics. She was too high-spirited to submit to the one, and too simple and sincere, still too much of a child, to feel anything but annoyance at the sentimental gallantry of the other. The genial spirit of comradeship in Scoville, could it have been maintained through months of ordinary life, would probably have prepared the way for deeper feeling on the part of both, but there had been no time for the gradual development of good-will and friendly understanding into something more. They had been caught in an unexpected whirl of events and swept forward into relations utterly unforeseen. He owed his escape from much dreaded captivity and his very life to her, and, as he had said, these facts, to her generous nature, were even more powerful in their influence than if she herself had received the priceless favors. At the same time, her course towards him, dictated at first by mere humanity, then good-will, had made his regard for her seem natural even to her girlish heart. If

she had read it all in a book, years before, she would have said, "A man couldn't do less than love one when fortune had enabled her to do so much for him." So she had simply approved of his declaration, down by the run, of affection for which she was not yet ready, and she approved of him all the more fondly because he did not passionately and arbitrarily demand or expect that she should feel as he did, in return. "I didn't," she had said to herself a score of times, "and that was enough for him."

When later, for his sake, she faced the darkness of midnight, a peril she dared not contemplate, and the cruel misjudgment which would follow her action if discovered, something deeper awoke in her nature — something kindled into strong, perplexing life when, in his passionate gratitude, he had snatched her in his arms and, as she had said, "given her his whole heart because he couldn't help himself." From that moment, on her part there had been no more merely kind, tranquil thoughts about Scoville, but a shy, trembling, blushing self-consciousness even when in solitude his image rose before her.

As she sought to regain composure after the last interview with her cousin, and to think of her best course in view of what seemed his dangerous knowledge, a truth, kept back thus far by solemn and absorbing scenes, suddenly became dear to her. The spirit of all-consuming selfishness again manifested by Whately, revealed as never before the gulf of abject misery into which she would have fallen as his wife. "If it hadn't been for Lieutenant Scoville I might now have been his despairing bond slave," she thought; "I might have been any way if the Northern officer were any other kind of a man, brutal, coarse, as I had been led to expect, or even indifferent and stupid. I might have been forced into relations from which I could not escape and then have learned afterwards what noble, unselfish men there are in the world.

Oh, I could marry Allan Scoville, I could love him and devote my life to him wholly, knowing all the time that I needn't protect myself, because he would always be a kinder, traer, better protector. How little I have done for him compared with that from which he has saved me!"

There was a knock at the door and Zany quickly entered. "I des slip off while ole miss in de sto'-room, ter gib you a warnin', Miss Lou. Hain't had no charnce till dis minit. Dat ar ole fox, Perkins, been snoopin' roun' yistidy arter we un's tracks en las' night he tell Mad Whately a heap ob his 'jecterin'."

"But Zany," said Miss Lou, "you don't think they know any thing."

"Kyant

"Reck'n hit's all des 'jecterin'," Zany replied. be nufin' else. We des got ter face hit out. Doan you fear on me. We uns mus' dis star stupid-like ef dey ax questions," and she whisked off again.

The girl felt that the spirit of Zany's counsel would be the best policy to adopt. While she might not "star stupidlike" she could so coldly ignore all reference to Scoville's escape as to embarrass any one who sought to connect her with it. In the clearer consciousness of her feeling towards the Union officer her heart grew glad and strong at the thought of the service she had rendered him, nor did it shrink at suffering for his sake. A gratitude quite as strong as his own now possessed her that he had been the means of keeping her from a union dreaded even as an ignorant child, and now known, by the love which made her a woman, to be earthly perdition.

Having escaped that," she reflected, "there's nothing else I greatly fear," and she went down to breakfast resolving that she would be so faithful in her duties as a nurse that no one in authority would listen to her cousin or Perkins if they sought to make known their surmises.