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“I suppose you don’t know that this is private property?” she said sharply.

The group halted and turned towards her. The orderly, who was following, turned his face aside and smiled. The younger officer demurely lifted his cap. The elder, gray, handsome, in a general’s uniform, after a moment’s half-astounded, half-amused scrutiny of the little figure, gravely raised his gauntleted fingers in a military salute.

“I beg your pardon, madam, but I am afraid we never even thought of that. We are making a preliminary survey for the Government with a possible view of fortifying the bluff. It is very doubtful if you will be disturbed in any rights you may have, but if you are, the Government will not fail to make it good to you.” He turned carelessly to the aide beside him. “I suppose the bluff is quite inaccessible from here?”

“I don’t know about that, general. They say that Marion, after he killed Henderson, escaped down this way,” said the young man.

“Indeed, what good was that? How did he get away from here?”

“They say that Mrs. Fairfax was hanging round in a boat, waiting for him. The story of the escape is all out now.”

They moved away with a slight perfunctory bow to Mrs. Bunker, only the younger officer noting that the pert, pretty little Western woman wasn’t as sharp and snappy to his superior as she had at first promised to be.

She turned back to the cottage astounded, angry, and vaguely alarmed. Who was this Mrs. Fairfax who had usurped her fame and solitary devotion? There was no woman in the boat that took him off; it was equally well known that he went in the ship alone. If they had heard that some woman was with him here–why should they have supposed it was Mrs. Fairfax? Zephas might know something–but he was away. The thought haunted her that day and the next. On the third came a more startling incident.

She had been wandering along the edge of her domain in a state of restlessness which had driven her from the monotony of the house when she heard the barking of the big Newfoundland dog which Zephas had lately bought for protection and company. She looked up and saw the boat and its solitary rower at the landing. She ran quickly to the house to bring the packet. As she entered she started back in amazement. For the sitting-room was already in possession of a woman who was seated calmly by the table.

The stranger turned on Mrs. Bunker that frankly insolent glance and deliberate examination which only one woman can give another. In that glance Mrs. Bunker felt herself in the presence of a superior, even if her own eyes had not told her that in beauty, attire, and bearing the intruder was of a type and condition far beyond her own, or even that of any she had known. It was the more crushing that there also seemed to be in this haughty woman the same incongruousness and sharp contrast to the plain and homely surroundings of the cottage that she remembered in HIM.

“Yo’ aw Mrs. Bunker, I believe,” she said in languid Southern accents. “How de doh?”

“I am Mrs. Bunker,” said Mrs. Bunker shortly.

“And so this is where Cunnle Marion stopped when he waited fo’ the boat to take him off,” said the stranger, glancing lazily around, and delaying with smiling insolence the explanation she knew Mrs. Bunker was expecting. “The cunnle said it was a pooh enough place, but I don’t see it. I reckon, however, he was too worried to judge and glad enough to get off. Yo’ ought to have made him talk–he generally don’t want much prompting to talk to women, if they’re pooty.”

“He didn’t seem in a hurry to go,” said Mrs. Bunker indignantly. The next moment she saw her error, even before the cruel, handsome smile of her unbidden guest revealed it.