Page:Randall Parrish - The Red Mist.djvu/207

 Rh  with that careless, laughing girl riding in advance. Could she be acting a part? or did she actually feel indifferent to my fate? Surely she must know, must understand the conditions of my arrest. She was a soldier's daughter, and had seen enough of army life to realize the treatment given a captured spy. Yet the fate overhanging me apparently made not the slightest impression upon her. She had never glanced at me as she came forth from the house; she had passed me by as if totally unaware of my existence, and now I could hear the sound of her laughter, as she chattered unconcerned with her three companions. There was but one conclusion possible—she really cared nothing. She had, obeying blindly the first impulse, endeavored to protect me from arrest, yet even that effort might have been made in fear lest I announce our marriage. But now, assured that I would not speak, relieved of that dread, her only remaining desire was to forget me utterly, to blot me completely from her memory.

It was a bitter thought, and yet no other was possible; nothing in her conduct, in the echo of her laughing words, the interest she exhibited in her blue-coated cavaliers, led me to any other conclusion. Perhaps I should have realized that such light-heartedness on her part must be assumed, for, casting my own case entirely aside, it was not natural that