ds Monroe, as one looks at
a stranger, while he, after one look as she entered, continued some
remark to Mr. Loring.

For an instant Gertrude's eyes grew narrow as she glanced from one to
the other; then she recovered her usual sweet manner, as she turned to
Judithe:

"Pardon me, I fancied you two had met. Madame Caron, permit me to
present Captain Monroe, one of our recent acquisitions."

Both bowed; neither spoke. Colonel McVeigh entered at that moment. He
had changed the grey travelling suit in which he arrived, for the grey
uniform of his regiment, and Judithe, however critical she tried to
be, could not but acknowledge that he was magnificent; mentally she
added, "Magnificent animal; but what of the soul, the soul?"

There was no lack of soul in his eyes as he looked at her and crossed
the room, as though drawn by an invisible chain, and noted, as a lover
ever notes, that the dress she wore had in its soft, silvery folds, a
suggestion of sentiment for the cause he championed.

But when he murmured something of his appreciation, she dropped her
eyes to the fan she held, and when she glanced slowly up it was in a
manner outlawing the tete-a-tete.

"I realize now, Colonel McVeigh, that you are really a part of the
army," she remarked in the tone of one who makes the conversation
general. "You were a very civilian-looking person this morning. I
have, like your Southern ladies, acquired a taste for warlike
trappings; the uniform is very handsome."

"Thanks; I hope you will find my next one more becoming, since it is
to be that of Brigadier-General."

Although Matthew Loring's sight was impaired, his locomotion slow, and
his left hand and arm yet helpless, his sense of hearing was acute
enough to hear the words even across Monroe's conversation, for his
sunken eyes lit up as he twisted his head towards the speaker:

"What's that, Kenneth? You to command a brigade?"

"So they tell me," assented McVeigh. "The commission just reached
me."

"Good enough! Do you hear that, Gertrude? A Brigadier-General at
twenty-five. Well, I don't see what more a man could want."

"I do," he said, softly, to Judithe, so softly that she felt rather
than heard the words, to which his eyes bore witness. Then he turned
to reply to Mr. Loring's questions of military movements.

"No, I can't give you much special information today," and he smiled
across at Monroe, when Loring found fault with the government
officials who veiled th