Page:Randall Parrish--My Lady of the South.djvu/84

MY LADY OF THE SOUTH I could shoot you down if I were still armed, and I know I would denounce you here and now, if there was any one at hand able to make you prisoner. We remain enemies, but—but, in some unaccountable way, I cannot personally hate you."

"You mean it is the Yankee, and not the man you war against?"

"I am certainly enlisted against your cause; nor have I any real reason to respect you otherwise."

"You consider me guilty then of deliberate treachery toward you?"

Her clear, accusing eyes were apparently gazing toward my shrouded face.

"Was it anything else?"

The blunt question came so swiftly that I stood hesitating. She was so frankly outspoken, so uncompromisingly direct, as to confuse me, yet in truth scarcely permitting any time for answer.

"What was it except treachery? You came to us falsely wearing that uniform which we respect; you came pretending to be another man; you obtained entrance to the sanctity of our home under an assumed name; you deliberately tricked me into a most unhappy and compromising position. Could any right-minded woman ever forgive all this? Is what you have done justified even by Yankee ethics?"

"No," I acknowledged gravely. "All the rest might be justified by the necessities of war, but not the personal injury which I have done you. Yet I am going to make that wrong as easy to remedy as I possibly can; I am [ 76 ]