this
summer."

"A Black Republican meeting!" exclaimed Virginia, scornfully ignoring the
rest of what was said. "Then I'll come, Anne dear," she cried, tripping
the length of the room. "I'll come as Titania. Who will you be?"

She cantered off down the drive and out of the gate, leaving a very
puzzled young woman watching her from the window. But when Virginia
reached the forest at the bend of the road, she pulled her horse down to
a walk.

She bethought herself of the gown which her Uncle Daniel had sent her
from Calvert House, and of the pearls. And she determined to go as her
great-grandmother, Dorothy Carvel.

Shades of romance! How many readers will smile before the rest of this
true incident is told?

What had happened was this. Miss Anne Brinsmade had driven to town in her
mother's Jenny Lind a day or two before, and had stopped (as she often
did) to pay a call on Mrs. Brice. This lady, as may be guessed, was not
given to discussion of her husband's ancestors, nor of her own. But on
the walls of the little dining-room hung a Copley and two Stuarts. One of
the Stuarts was a full length of an officer in the buff and blue of the
Continental Army. And it was this picture which caught Anne's eye that
day.

"How like Stephen!" she exclaimed. And added. "Only the face is much
older. Who is it, Mrs. Brice?"

"Colonel Wilton Brice, Stephen's grandfather. There is a marked look
about all the Brices. He was only twenty years of age when the Revolution
began. That picture was painted much later in life, after Stuart came
back to America, when the Colonel was nearly forty. He had kept his
uniform, and his wife persuaded him to be painted in it."

"If Stephen would only come as Colonel Wilton Brice!" she cried. "Do you
think he would, Mrs. Brice?"

Mrs. Brice laughed, and shook her head.

"I am afraid not, Anne," she said. "I have a part of the uniform
upstairs, but I could never induce him even to try it on."

As she drove from shop to shop that day, Anne reflected that it certainly
would not be like Stephen to wear his grandfather's uniform to a ball.
But she meant to ask him, at any rate. And she had driven home
immediately to write her invitations. It was with keen disappointment
that she read his note of regret.

However, on the very day of the ball, Anne chanced to be in town again,
and caught sight of Stephen pushing his way among the people on Fourth
Street. She waved her hand to him, and called to Nico