The house was still and not a soul was in sight as the three, still silent, walked up the great path. When they were near the portico Harry came out. He looked worried and anxious.
"Let her alone," said Colonel Dale gently. Like brother and cousin, Harry and Hugh were merely irritated by the late revelation, but the father was shocked that his child was no longer a child. Erskine remembered the girl as she waited for Grey's coming at the sun-dial, her face as she walked with him up the path. For a moment the two boys stood in moody silence. Harry took the rapiers in and put them in their place on the wall. Hugh quietly disappeared. Erskine, with a word of apology, went to his room, and Colonel Dale sat down on the porch alone.
As the dusk gathered, Erskine, looking gloomily through his window, saw the girl flutter like a white moth past the box-hedge and down the path. A moment later he saw the tall form of Colonel Dale follow her--and both passed from sight. On the thick turf the colonel's feet too were noiseless, and when Barbara stopped at the sun-dial he too paused. Her hands were caught tight and her drawn young face was lifted to the yellow disk just rising from the far forest gloom. She was unhappy, and the colonel's heart ached sorely, for any unhappiness of hers always trebled his own.
"Little girl!" he called, and no lover's voice could have been more gentle. "Come here!"
She turned and saw him, with arms outstretched, the low moon lighting all the tenderness in his fine old face, and she flew to him and fell to weeping on his breast. In wise silence he stroked her hair until she grew a little calmer.
"I understand. You were quite right to send him away, but you did not want him harmed."
"I know. It's too bad, but none of us seem quite to trust him."
"That's it," she sobbed; "I don't either, and yet----"
"I know. I know. My little girl must be wise and brave, and maybe it will all pass and she will be glad. But she must be brave. Mother is not well and she must not be made unhappy too. She must not know. Can't my little girl come back to the house now? She must be hostess and this is Erskine's last night." She looked up, brushing away her tears.
"Yes--he goes to-morrow to join Captain Clark at Williamsburg on his foolish campaign in the Northwest. We might never see him again."