"
"Then come over from Lincoln to McClellan," he laughed.
"And join your group of conspirators--never!"
"Not if I ask it, because I love you?"
[Illustration: "Betty glanced at the stolid, set face and firm lips."]
Her brown eyes sparkled with anger:
"You'll not find this a joke!"
"That's why I treat it seriously, my dear," was the firm reply. "If I
could throw up my position in this war on the sudden impulse of my
sweetheart, I'd be ashamed to look a man in the face--and you would
despise me!"
"If your Commander succeeds to-day in bringing disaster to our army I'll
despise you for aiding him----"
"Let's not discuss it--please, dear!" he begged with a frown.
"As you please," was the cold reply.
They rode on in silence, broken only by the increasing roar of the great
guns at Manassas. Betty glanced at the stolid, set face and firm lips.
Her anger steadily rose with every throb of Pope's cannon. Each low
thunder peal on the horizon now was a cry for help from dying mangled
thousands and the man she loved refusing to hear.
Suddenly the picture of his brother flashed before her vision, the
high-strung, clean young spirit, chivalrous, daring, fighting for what
he knew to be right--right because right is right, and wrong is wrong.
She looked at John Vaughan with a feeling of fierce anger.
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