ed, and then she asked. "Are you just up from there?"

"No; but I don't know but I shall go."

"Hello, Mavering!" said Mr. Brinkley, coming up and taking his hand into
his fat grasp. "On your way to Fortress Monroe? Better come with us.
Why; Munt!"

He turned to greet this other Bostonian, who had hardly expressed his
joy at meeting with his fellow-townsmen when the hostess rustled softly
up, and said, with the irony more or less friendly, which everybody uses
in speaking of Boston, or recognising the intellectual pre-eminence of
its people, "I'm not going to let you keep this feast of reason all
to your selves. I want you to leaven the whole lump," and she began to
disperse them, and to introduce them about right and left.

Dan tried to find his Virginian again, but she was gone. He found Miss
Anderson; she was with her aunt. "Shall we be tearing you away?" she
asked.

"Oh no. I'm quite ready to go."

His nerves were in a tremble. Those Boston faces and voices had brought
it all back again; it seemed as if he had met Alice. He was silent and
incoherent as they drove home, but Miss Anderson apparently did not want
to talk much, and apparently did not notice his reticence.

He fell asleep with the pang in his heart which had been there so often.

When Dan came down to breakfast he found the Brinkleys at a pleasant
place by one of the windows, and after they had exchanged a pleased
surprise with him that they should all happen to be in the same hotel,
they asked him to sit at their table.

There was a bright sun shining, and the ache was gone out of Dan's
heart. He began to chatter gaily with Mrs. Brinkley about Washington.

"Oh, better come on to Fortress Monroe," said her husband. "Better come
on with us."

"No, I can't just yet," said Dan. "I've got some business here that will
keep me for awhile. Perhaps I may run down there a little later."

"Miss Anderson seems to have a good deal of business in Washington too,"
observed Brinkley, with some hazy notion of saying a pleasant rallying
thing to the young man. He wondered at the glare his wife gave him. With
those panned oysters before him he had forgotten all about Dan's love
affair with Miss Pasmer.

Mrs. Brinkley hastened to make the mention of Miss Anderson as
impersonal as possible.

"It was so nice to meet her again. She is such an honest, wholesome
creature, and so bright and full of sense. She always made me think of
the broad daylight. I always