"About you!"

And that began it: he was a gallant man, and he had been a brave one. He
was not aware how far he was going on so short an acquaintance, but
his temerity was not displeasing to the lady. She liked his manner of
storming the citadel, and she did not realize that he merely spoke at
random, as best he might. He was in his uniform a splendid and martial
presentment of military youth, and indeed he was much the junior of his
compeers.

"Who are Captain Girard's people, Papa?" she asked Colonel Duval next
morning, as the family party sat at breakfast in quasi seclusion at
one of the small round tables in the crowded dining-room, full of the
chatter of people and the clatter of dishes.

"Girard?" Colonel Duval repeated thoughtfully. "I really don't know. I
have an impression they live somewhere in East Tennessee. I never met
him till just about the end of the war."

"Oh, Papa! How unsatisfactory you are! You never know anything about
anybody."

"I should think his people must be very plain," said Mrs. Duval. Her
social discrimination was extremely acute and in constant practice.

"I don't know why. He is very much of a gentleman," the Colonel
contended. His heart was warm to-day with much fraternizing, and it was
not kind to brush the bloom off his peach.

"Oh, trifles suggest the fact. He is not at all _au fait_."

He was, however, experienced in ways of the world unimagined in her
philosophy. The reunion had drawn to a close, ending in a flare of
jollity and tender reminiscence and good-fellowship. The old soldiers
were all gone save a few regular patrons of the hotel, who with their
families were completing their summer sojourn. Captain Girard lingered,
too, fascinated by this glimpse of the frivolous world, hitherto
unimagined, rather than by the incense to his vanity offered by his
facile acceptance as a squire of dames. For the first time in his life
he felt the grinding lack of money. Being a man of resource, he set
about swiftly supplying this need. In the dull days of inaction, when
the armies lay supine and only occasionally the monotony was broken by
the engagement of distant skirmishers or a picket line was driven in on
the main body, he had learned to play a game at cards much in vogue
at that period, though for no greater hazards than grains of corn or
Confederate money, almost as worthless. In the realization now that the
same principles held good with stakes of value, he seemed to enter