ing
impression. It reminded Mrs. Truscott of the stencil inscription over
the local Inferno.

"Oh, Jack! Have you seen Mr. Blake's latest absurdity,--that slangy
paraphrase of Dante at the club-room?"

"I heard of it," said Truscott, smilingly. "Who told you of it,
Queenie?"

"Why!--I--saw it to-day," she replied, as though suddenly conscious that
she had put her foot on forbidden ground. Then, as he said nothing
whatever, she went on in anxious explanation: "Mr. Gleason asked us in
to have a lemonade on our way from drill. You know the ladies often go,
Jack."

"I know some of them do, Gracie."

"Ought we not to have gone--I mean, ought I not to have gone? for Marion
would not. Indeed, Jack, the moment I saw she had not come in I left at
once. Was it--are you vexed?"

"There's no great harm done, dear. I had not thought to warn you against
it, though I knew the others--some of them, went there at times."

"You mean you had not supposed it would be necessary, Jack."

And so, it must be admitted, he had; and poor Grace was in the depths as
a natural consequence. It was the first time she had felt that he was
disappointed in her, and though the matter was trivial and his loving
kiss and caress reassured her, she was plunged in dismay to think that
in entering the club-room with Mr. Gleason she had done what he
disapproved of, what, as a woman of refined breeding, she should have
shunned, and--what Marion _had_ declined. She was too much a woman not
to feel that therein lay an additional sting; she was too gentle and
loving a wife not to feel forlorn at thought of having disappointed
Jack. Some women would have resented the idea of his objecting to such a
thing. (No, fair reader, of course I don't mean you; but is it not just
possible I may be right in saying so of Mrs. ---- next door?)

Grace had kissed her friend good-night just a wee bit less
affectionately than usual, and Marion well knew that husband and wife
were best left alone together, as the surest and speediest way of
settling the affair. She, therefore, went to her room.

There were only two rooms up-stairs in the little army house, each with
its big closet, a door connecting the two, and others opening out on the
narrow landing above the stairs; each with its sharply sloping roof and
dormer-window. Grace had insisted on her guest's taking the front room,
looking out on the parade as she had at the Point; but after much
laughing discussion they sett