s here to listen to them. She was sure
they must be discussing something it would do him good to hear.

"Is Mr. Vernon a very nice man?" asked Ellen.

"One of the best. These artist fellows are apt to be a bit
swollen-headed for my taste, but Lucas Vernon's a sportsman."

She appreciated the distinction succinctly indicated.

"He does sound nice," she said. "Oh, I wish everybody had enough money!"

Frank drew another distinction.

"Everybody who deserved it, anyhow."

"Well," said Ellen softly, "if I had the arrangement of things, I would
risk it and give _everybody_ enough. It makes me so unhappy to see
people longing for things they can never possibly get--whether they
deserve them or not."

The young soldier looked at her oddly from the corner of his eye. Could
it be possible that two people could sit so close together and speak in
such hushed confidence, and yet that one of them could be so strangely
oblivious as not to know when she had laid her slender little finger on
the other's open wound? He had the strictest notions of duty and of
honor: it was absolutely essential she never should realize: but, alas!
the sympathetic widow was playing the most divinely romantic waltz. To
complete the horrible temptation, Ellen looked suddenly at him with her
tender eyes shining and her delicate skin gently flushed and murmured--

"It makes me wretched--I pity them so!"

The waltz grew more romantic with every note, the temptation to feel
this pity soothe his own wound more irresistible.

"I'm one of 'em," he said.

He endeavored to compromise with duty by throwing the most unfeeling
ferocity into his confession; but even the best drilled soldier cannot
simultaneously advance and stand where he was.

Ellen's eyes were riveted on him now.

"I'm sorry. Have I said anything I shouldn't?"

She looked distressed, and he realized he had overdone the ferocity.

"No, no, I assure you. I only meant I--I--well, one can't have
everything."

He wished that delirious waltz would stop. It made it so hard to collect
one's thoughts, and especially to recover the blank countenance he had
managed to assume before he took this chair and heard that music and
looked into those eyes. She smiled with playful kindness.

"Are you so frightfully hard up?"

"It isn't money! Oh, can't you--"

He didn't finish his sentence; nor did he need to. A sudden light dawned
in Ellen's eyes; her lips instinctively parted; and then she turned