"You have told!" she exclaimed, "My father knows that Captain Orme--"
It was my own turn to feel surprise, which perhaps I showed.
"I have told no one. It seemed to me that first I ought to come to you
and ask you about this. Why was Orme there?"
She stared at me. "He told me he would come back some time," she
admitted at length. All the while she was fighting with herself,
striving, exactly as Orme had done, to husband her powers for an
impending struggle. "You see," she added, "he has secret business all
over the country--I will own I believe him to be in the secret service
of the inner circle of a number of Southern congressmen and business
men. He is in with the Southern circle--of New Orleans, of
Charleston--Washington. For this reason he could not always choose his
hours of going and coming."
"Does your father know of his peculiar hours?"
"I presume so, of course."
"I saw a light at a window," I began, "whose window I do not know,
doubtless some servant's. It could not have been a signal?"
"A _signal_? What do you mean? Do you suspect me of putting out a beacon
light for a cheap night adventure with some man? Do you expect me to
tolerate that sort of thing from you?"
"I ask you to tolerate nothing," I said.
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