r Chauvenet and I will not shoot at each other in
the hotel dining-room. But I am really relieved that he has come. We have
an interesting fashion of running into each other; it would positively
grieve me to be obliged to wait long for him."

He smiled and thrust his hat under his arm. The sun was dropping behind
the great western barricade, and a chill wind crept sharply over the
valley.

He started to walk beside her as she turned away, but she paused
abruptly.

"Oh, this won't do at all! I can't be seen with you, even in the shadow
of my own house. I must trouble you to take the side gate,"--and she
indicated it by a nod of her head.

"Not if I know myself! I am not a fraudulent member of the German
nobility--you have told me so yourself. Your conscience is clear--I
assure you mine is equally so! And I am not a person, Miss Claiborne, to
sneak out by side gates--particularly when I came over the fence! It's a
long way around anyhow--and I have a horse over there somewhere by the
inn."

"My brother--"

"Is at Fort Myer, of course. At about this hour they are having dress
parade, and he is thoroughly occupied."

"But--there is Monsieur Chauvenet. He has nothing to do but amuse
himself."

They had reached the veranda steps, and she ran to the top and turned for
a moment to look at him. He still carried his hat and crop in one hand,
and had dropped the other into the side pocket of his coat. He was wholly
at ease, and the wind ruffled his hair and gave him a boyish look that
Shirley liked. But she had no wish to be found with him, and she
instantly nodded his dismissal and half turned away to go into the house,
when he detained her for a moment.

"I am perfectly willing to afford Monsieur Chauvenet all imaginable
entertainment. We are bound to have many meetings. I am afraid he reached
this charming valley before me; but--as a rule--I prefer to be a little
ahead of him; it's a whim--the merest whim, I assure you."

He laughed, thinking little of what he said, but delighting in the
picture she made, the tall pillars of the veranda framing her against the
white wall of the house, and the architrave high above speaking, so he
thought, for the amplitude, the breadth of her nature. Her green cloth
gown afforded the happiest possible contrast with the white background;
and her hat--(for a gown, let us remember, may express the dressmaker,
but a hat expresses the woman who wears it)--her hat, Armitage was aware,
w