last the mare stumbled slightly, and Prescott jerked the animal
so quickly and almost savagely on the lines that Miss Bentley
looked at him with something of a start.

"Dick," spoke Laura at last, turning and looking him frankly,
sweetly in the eyes, "have I done anything to offend you?"

"You, Laura?"

"I wondered," she continued. "You have been so very silent."

"I am afraid I was thinking," muttered Dick. "And that's a very
rude thing to do when it makes one seem to ignore the lady who
is with him," he added, forcing a smile. "I beg your pardon,
Laura, ten times over."

"Oh, I don't mind your being abstracted," she answered simply,
"so long as I am not the cause of it."

"You-----"

Dick checked himself quickly.

He had been right on the point of admitting that she had been
the cause of his abstraction, and such a statement as that would
have called for an abundance of further explanation.

So he forced himself into a peal of laughter that sounded nearly
natural.

"If I were to tell you what a ridiculous thing I was thinking about,
Laura!" he chuckled.

Then his West Point training against all forms of deceit led him
to wondering, at once, whether Mr. Cameron could truthfully be
defined as "a ridiculous thing."

"Tell me," smiled the girl patiently.

"Not I," defied Prescott gayly. "Then you would find me more
ridiculous than the thing about which I was thinking."

"Oh!" she replied, and the cadet fancied that his companion spoke
in a tone of more or less hurt.

But, at least, Dick could look straight into her face now, as they
talked, and every instant he realized more and more keenly how
lovely Miss Bentley was growing to be.

They were driving down sweet-scented country lanes now. The whole
scene fitted romance. The cadet remembered Flirtation Walk, at
West Point, and it struck him that there was danger, at the present
moment, of Flirtation Drive.

"I wonder what the dear girl is thinking about at this present
moment?" pondered Dick.

"I wonder what it was that made him so abstracted, and then so
suddenly merry?" was the thought in Miss Bentley's mind.

"That was a very pretty road we came through before we turned into
this one," commented Dick at a hazard.

"I didn't notice it," replied Laura. "Where are we now? Oh,
yes! I know the locality now."

"You have driven out here before---with Mr. Cameron?"

The words were out ere Cadet Prescott could recall them. He felt
indes