Hildegarde shuddered. Quietly she stepped back inside the door, stood there trembling a few moments, then opened it noisily and commenced to descend. She nodded to Philip, who looked at her queerly, and walked rapidly to the house.
She did not go to her room, but threw herself in a chair in the library. She could not be said to think for some time; her mind was in chaos. But matters arranged themselves before her after a time with cruel clearness. Her father was plotting deliberately to murder a man, for that is what it amounted to--to murder a watchman faithful at his post. That very night. And the watchman was Potter Waite's! This attack was to be made upon him, and the labor which had meant so much to him for the past year would be brought to nothing, destroyed by one blast of devilish explosive.
She knew what Potter was doing; remembered those talks with him, his enthusiasm, his awakening to patriotism--and she, too, was a patriot. That work of his must have been of value; he must have achieved much to demand attention from her father and his companions. She was conscious of a glow of pride, and then was furious with herself for feeling pride. What interest had she in Potter Waite--and if she had an interest in him, or in any honest man, what could come of it? There was another decision she had reached: That she could be wife to no honest American. She, the daughter of a traitor, could make no honorable man the father of the grandchildren of a traitor. She had thought of those children--and of their shame, and of generations of shame that would follow them. The stigma would follow from mother to children to children's children. Nearly a hundred and fifty years had passed since Benedict Arnold sought to betray his country, and his name was remembered, his treachery recalled, where noble men and noble acts had been forgotten. No children of hers should feel the shame that would be their birthright because the blood of Herman von Essen was in their veins. Such a conclusion is a terrible thing for a girl like Hildegarde, vivid with life, entering womanhood, ripe for love and marriage! But it was there, weighing her, overshadowing her, choking her with its noose of blackness.