hrew her arms around her friend without more ado.

"Don't quarrel with me, Jinny," she said tearfully. "I couldn't bear it.
He--Mr. Brice is not coming, I am sure."

Virginia disengaged herself.

"He is not coming?"

"No," said Anne. "You asked me if he was invited. And I was going on to
tell you that he could not come."

She stopped, and stared at Virginia in bewilderment. That young lady,
instead of beaming, had turned her back. She stood flicking her whip at
the window, gazing out over the trees, down the slope to the river. Miss
Russell might have interpreted these things. Simple Anne!

"Why isn't he coming?" said Virginia, at last.

"Because he is to be one of the speakers at a big meeting that night.
Have you seen him since you got home, Jinny? He is thinner than he was.
We are much worried about him, because he has worked so hard 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