"You are going with the wounded to Richmond?" he said.
"Yes," she replied. "I am going back to Miss Grayson's, to the house and the city from which you helped me with so much trouble and danger to escape."
"I am easier in my conscience because I did so," he said. "But Miss Catherwood, do you not fear for yourself? Are you not venturing into danger again?"
She smiled once more and replied in a slightly humourous tone:
"No; there is no danger. I went as one unwelcome before; I go as a guest now. You see, I am rising in the Confederacy. One of your powerful men, Mr. Sefton, has been very kind to me."
"What has he done for you?" asked Prescott, with a sudden jealous twinge.
"He has given me this pass, which will take me in or out of Richmond as I wish."
She showed the pass, and as Prescott looked at it he felt the colour rise in his face. Could the heart of the Secretary have followed the course of his own?
"I am here now, I may say, almost by chance," she continued. "After I left you I reached the main body of the Northern army in safety, and I intended to go at once to Washington, where I have relatives, though none so near and dear as Miss Grayson--you see I am really of the South, in part at least--but there was a long delay about a pass, the way of going and other such things, and while I was waiting General Grant began his great forward movement. There was nothing left for me to do then but to cling to the army--and--and I thought I might be of some use there. Women may not be needed on a battlefield, but they are afterward."
"I, most of all men, ought to know that," said Prescott, earnestly. "Don't I know that you, unaided, brought me to that house? Were it not for you I should probably have died alone in the Wilderness."
"I owed you something, Captain Prescott, and I have tried to repay a little," she said.
"You owe me nothing; the debt is all mine."
"Captain Prescott, I hope you do not think I have been unwomanly," she said.
"Because I went to Richmond alone, though I did so really because I had nowhere else to go. You believe me a spy, and you think for that reason I was trying to escape from Richmond!"
She stopped and looked at Prescott, and when she met his answering gaze the flush in her cheeks deepened.