irs of state require all of his time, for which duty he is obliged
to visit many people on matters of pure business."

"Oh!"

She appeared satisfied at this explanation.

"It seems as if we had known him all our lives. He feels so perfectly at
home with us."

"Exactly."

"You have met him often with us, haven't you, Marjorie?"

"I first met him at the Military Ball through Peggy," Marjorie replied
naively.

"But you must have met him here. He has been here so often," she
insisted.

"Then I vow our General has felt the smite of your fair daughter's
charms," remarked Mr. Anderson.

Marjorie breathed a sigh of relief at the timely interruption.

"Do you really think so?" asked Mrs. Shippen, with no attempt to conceal
her impatience.

"Unquestionably.

'Smiles from reason flow,
To brute denied, and are of love the food.'

So sang the bard, and so sing I of His Excellency."

"But his age! He cannot now be thinking of matrimony."

"Age, my dear Mrs. Shippen, is a matter of feeling, not of years. The
greatest miracle of love is to eradicate all disparity. Before it age,
rank, lineage, distinction dissolve like the slowly fading light of the
sun at eventide. The General is bent on conquest; that I'll wager. What
say you, Major? A five pound note?"

"Not I. 'Old men are twice children,' you know."

"Well, if I do say it," remarked Mrs. Shippen, "my daughter has had a
splendid education and is as cultured a girl as there is in the city and
would make a fitting helpmate for any man, no matter what his position
in life may be."

The orchestra began to fill the room with the strains of the minuet. Mr.
Anderson arose and advanced towards Marjorie.

"May I have the pleasure of your company?" he said.

Marjorie arose and gave him her arm.

II

She tripped through the graces of the minuet in a mechanical sort of a
fashion, her thoughts in a far off land of amazement and gloomy
desolation. The unexpected and adverse stroke of fortune which had
descended with hawk-like velocity upon Stephen had thoroughly
disconcerted her. Try as she would, her imagination could not be brought
under her control. There was one image that would not out, and that was
Stephen's.

A short note from him gave the first inkling to her. He had been placed
under arrest by order of Major-General Arnold on the charge of striking
his superior officer, in violation of the Fifth Article, Second Section
of the Americ