At this ball Janice was gladdened by word from André that he had effected the sale of the miniature, though he maintained absolute silence as to who the purchaser was, nor did she choose to inquire. The next morning brought a packet from him containing a rouleau of guineas, and so soon as they were counted, the girl hurried to the room on the ground floor which the commissary had taken as a half office, and, after an apology for the unannounced intrusion, said,—

“You have been good enough, Lord Clowes, to favour us with sundry loans, for which we can never be grateful enough, but ’t is now in our power to repay them.”

“Pay me!” cried the baron, incredulously.

“Yes,” replied Janice, laying down the pile of gold on the desk. “Wilt tell me the exact amount?”

The guineas were too indisputable for Clowes to question the girl’s ability to carry out her intention, but he demanded, “How came you by such a sum of gold?”

“’T is—That concerns thee not,” replied the girl, with spirit.

“And does thy father know?”

“I ask you, Lord Clowes,” Janice responded, “to tell me the amount we owe you.”

For a moment the officer sat with a scowl on his face, then suddenly he threw it off, and with a hearty, friendly manner said: “Nay, Miss Meredith, think naught of it. You ’re welcome ten times over to the money, and what more ye shall ever need.” He rose as he spoke, and held out his hand toward the girl. “Generosity is not the monopoly of razorless youngsters of twenty.”

Janice, ignoring the hand, said: “Once again, Lord Clowes, I ask you to inform me of the amount of our debt, which if you will not tell me, you will force me to leave all the money.”

The angry frown returned to the commissary’s face, and all the reply he made was to touch a bell. “Tell Mr. Meredith I would have word with him in my office,” he said to the servant. Then he turned to Janice and remarked, “If ye insist on knowing the amount, ’t is as well that your father give it to ye, since clearly ye trust me in nothing.”

“Oh, Lord Clowes,” begged Janice, “wilt thou not let me pay this without calling in dadda? I—I acted without first speaking to him, and I fear me—” There her words were cut short by the entrance of the squire.

“I sent for ye, man, to help us unsnarl a coil. Your daughter insists on repaying the money I have loaned ye, and I thought it best ye should be witness to the transaction.” As he ended he pointed to the pile of coin.

“Odds bodikins!” exclaimed Mr. Meredith, as his eye followed the motion. “And where got ye such a sum, Jan?”

“Oh, dadda,” faltered the girl, “’t is a long story, of which I promise to make you a full narration, once we are alone, though I fear me you will think that I have done wrong. But, meantime, will you not tell me how much you owe Lord Clowes, and let me pay him? Believe me, the money is honestly come by.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” said the commissary, with a rough laugh. “Young macaronis are oft known to give girls hundreds of pounds and get nothing in return.”

All the reply Janice made was to go to the door. “Whenever you will come to the parlour, dadda, you shall know all, but I will not stay here to endure such speeches.”

Without thought of the gold, Mr. Meredith was hurrying after his daughter, when Clowes interrupted him.

“The explanation is simple enough, Meredith,” he said, “and I cannot but take it in bad part that your maid should borrow of Mobray in order to repay my loan to you.”

“I cannot believe that that is the explanation, Clowes,” protested Mr. Meredith. “But if it is, be assured that the money shall be returned him, and we will still stand your debtors.” Then he sought his daughter, and she poured out to him the whole story of the miniature.

“Wrong I may have been, dadda, to have taken it to begin with, but Colonel Brereton refused to receive it from me, and when he himself placed it about my picture, I could not but feel that it had truly become mine, and that I could dispose of it.”

“But who bought it of ye, Jan?” inquired the parent.

“That I know not,” said the girl, though hesitating and colouring at the question in her own mind whether she were not prevaricating, for André’s face and her own suspicions had really convinced her who was the nameless buyer. “Captain André assured me that the frame was fully worth five hundred pounds.”

“That I will not gainsay, lass,” replied the squire, “and the only blame I will lay on ye is that ye did not consult me before acting, for I could have negotiated it as well, and should have so managed as not to have offended Clowes. However, I make no doubt he’ll not hold rancour when he knows that the money came by the sale of a piece of jewelry, and was not merely borrowed. Did ye take your picture from the frame?”

“No, dadda. I did so once before, only to bring suspicion on myself; so this time I let it remain.”

“Ye might as well have removed it,” said Mr. Meredith, “for it could have added no money value to it.” Yet the squire had once been a lover, and should have known otherwise. This said, he returned to Clowes, and sought to mollify him by a statement of how the money had been obtained.

“Humph!” grunted the baron. “She’d better have brought the trinket to me, for I’d gladly have been the purchaser, for more even than she got by it.”

“I told the lass she should have left the sale of it to me,” answered the squire, “but ye know what women are.”

“Egad, I sometimes think, shallow as the sex is, no man fully knows that. However, we will waste no further parley on the matter. Put the money in your purse, man, for your future needs, and think naught about the debt to me.”

“Nay, Clowes. Since the money is here, ’t is as well to pay up.” And protest and argue as the commissary would, nothing would do the squire but to count out the amount on the spot from the heap of guineas, and to pocket, not without some satisfaction, the small surplus that remained. Then he left the room in great good cheer; but for some time after he was gone, the baron, leaving the gold piled on the table, paced the room in an evident fit of temper, while muttering to himself and occasionally shaking his head threateningly.

The gazetting of Mr. Meredith served only to increase this half-stifled anger, and on the very evening his appointment was announced in the “Pennsylvania Ledger,” the commissary recurred to his proposal.

“I heard by chance to-day that young Hennion had fallen a victim to the camp fever,” he told the squire, “and only held my tongue before the ladies through not wishing to be the reporter of bad tidings—though, as I understood it, neither Mrs. Meredith nor Miss Janice really wished the match.”

The father took time over a swallow of Madeira, then said: “’T is a grievous end for the good lad.”

“Ay, though I am not hypocrite enough to pretend that it affects me save for its freeing of your daughter, and so removing the one objection ye made to my taking her to wife.”

Once more the squire gained a moment’s breathing space over his wine before he replied: “Ye know, Clowes, that I’d willingly give ye the girl, but I find that she will have none of it, and ’t is a matter on which I choose not to force her inclination.”

“Well said; and I am the last man to wish an unwilling spouse,” responded the aspirant. “But ye know women’s ways enough not to be their dupes. In truth, having no stability of mind, the sex resemble a ship without a rudder, veering with every shift of the wind, and never sailing two days alike. But put a man at the helm, and they steer as straight a course as could be wished. Janice was hot to wed me once, and though she took affront later because she held me responsible for her punishment, yet she herself owned, but a few weeks ago, that she was still bound to me, which shows how little her moods mean. Having your consent secured, it will take me but a brief wooing to gain hers, that ye shall see.”

“Well,” rejoined Mr. Meredith, “she’s now old enough to know her own mind, and if ye can win her assent to your suit, mine shall not be lacking. But ’t is for ye to do that.”

“Spoken like a true friend, and here ’s my hand on it,” declared the commissary. “But there is one matter in which I wish ye to put an interfering finger, not so much to aid me as to save the maid from hazard. That fopling Mobray is buzzing about her and pilfering all the sweets that can be had short of matrimony—”

“Nay, Clowes, he’s no intriguer against my lass, that I am bound to say. ’T was only this morning, the moment he had news of Hennion’s death, he came to me like a man, to ask permission to address her.”

“Ho, he’s deeper bitten by her charms than I thought! retorted the suitor. “Or, on second thought, more like ’t is a last desperate leap to save himself from ruin. Let me warn ye that he has enough paper out to beggar him thrice over, and ’t is only a question of time ere his creditors come down on him and force him to sell his commission; after which he must sink into beggary.”

“I sorrow to hear it. He ’s a likely lad, and has kindly stood us in stead more than once.”

“And just because of his taking parts, he is likely to keep your girl’s heart in a state of incertitude, for ’t is only mortal for eighteen to fancy twenty more than forty-four. Therefore, unless ye want a gambling bankrupt for a son-in-law, give him his marching orders.”

“I’ll not do that after his kindness to my wife and child; but I’ll take good care to warn Janice.”

“Look that ye don’t only make him the more interesting to her. Girls of her age think little of where the next meal is to come from, and dote on the young prodigal.”

“Have no fear on that score,” replied the father.

On the morning following this conversation Janice was stopped by the commissary as she was passing his office. “Will ye give me the honour of your presence within for a moment?” he requested. “I have something of import to say to ye.”

With a little trepidation the girl entered, and took the seat he placed for her.

Taking a standing position at a respectful distance, Lord Clowes without circumlocution plunged at once into the object of the interview. “That I have long wished ye for my wife, Miss Meredith,” he said with frank bluffness, “is scarce worth repeating. That in one or two instances I have given ye cause to blame or doubt me, I am full conscious; ’t is not in man, I fear, to love such beauty, grace, and elegance, and keep his blood ever within bounds. ’T was this led me to suggest our elopement, and to my effort to bind ye to the troth. In both of these I erred, and now crave a pardon. Ye can scarce hold me guilty that my love made me hot for the quickest marriage I could compass, or that, believing ye in honour pledged to me, I should seek to assure myself of the plight from your own lips, ungenerous though it was at the moment. It has since been my endeavour to show that I regretted my impulsive persecution, and I trust that my long forbearance and self-effacement have proved to ye that your comfort and happiness are the first object of my heart.”

“You have been very good to us all,” answered Janice, “and I would that I were able to repay in full measure all we owe to you. But—”

“Ye can, and by one word,” interjected the suitor.

“But, Lord Clowes,” she continued, with a voice that trembled a little, “I cannot yield to thy wish. Censurable I know myself to be—and no one can upbraid me more than I upbraid myself—yet between the two wrongs I must choose, and ’t is better for both of us that I break the implied promise, entered into at a moment when I was scarce myself than to make a new one which I know to be false from the beginning, and impossible to fulfil.”

“Of the old promise we will say naught, Miss Meredith,” replied the baron. “If your sense of right and wrong absolve ye, Baron Clowes is not the man to insist upon it. But there is still a future that ye must not overlook. ’T will be years, if ever, ere ye once again enjoy your property, and though this appointment—which is like to prove dear-bought—for the moment enables ye to face the world, it is but a short-lived dependence. To ye I will confide what is as yet known to but a half-dozen: his Majesty has accepted Sir William resignation, and he leaves us so soon as Sir Henry Clinton arrives. The new commander will have his own set of hungry hangers-on to provide with places, and your father’s days will be numbered. In my own help I shall be as unstinting as in the past, but it is quite on the cards that I, too, lose my appointment, in which case I shall return to England. Would not a marriage with me make—”

“But I love you not,” broke in Janice.

“Ye have fallen in love with that—”

“I love no one, Lord Clowes; and indeed begin to fear that I was born without a heart.”

“Then your objection is that of a very young girl who knows nothing of the world. Miss Meredith, the women who marry for love are rare indeed, and but few of them fail of a bitter disappointment. I cannot hope that my arguments will convince ye of this, but counsel with your parents, and ye’ll find they bear me out. On the one side stands eventual penury and perhaps violence for ye all; on the other, marriage with a man who, whatever his faults, loves ye hotly, who will give ye a title and wealth, and who will see to it that your parents want for nothing. ’T is an alternative that few women would hesitate over, but I ask no answer now, and would rather that ye give none till ye have taken consideration upon it.”

Janice rose. “I—I will talk with dadda and mommy,” she said, “and learn their wishes.” But even as she spoke the words a slight shiver unsteadied her voice.