He bowed his head. He felt as yet he could not trust his voice, and
envied her her own.
"I may sit up, mayn't I?" She managed, by sheer force of will, to
struggle to a sitting posture. Then, as the coverlet slipped from the
bare shoulder, she said, as she drew it, with a shiver of disgust,
around her again,--
"I forgot that you strip women, you Northern soldiers! But I forgot,
too," she added, with a sarcastic smile, "that you are also my husband,
and I am in your room."
The contemptuous significance of her speech dispelled the last lingering
remnant of Brant's dream. In a voice as dry as her own, he said,--
"I am afraid you will now have to remember only that I am a Northern
general, and you a Southern spy."
"So be it," she said gravely. Then impulsively, "But I have not spied on
YOU."
Yet, the next moment, she bit her lips as if the expression had
unwittingly escaped her; and with a reckless shrug of her shoulders she
lay back on her pillow.
"It matters not," said Brant coldly. "You have used this house and those
within it to forward your designs. It is not your fault that you found
nothing in the dispatch-box you opened."
She stared at him quickly; then shrugged her shoulders again.
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