hazel
eyes. And cognisant of every fleeting change of expression in those lovely
eyes, the taller of her two companions thought, with a stab of pain:

"_Your father was that man's friend, and the comrade of others like him._"

"Now, then!" challenged Beauvayse, as the three figures moved out of
sight.

"The 'Girl With the Golden Eyes'?" said somebody.

"You wouldn't speak of her in the same breath with that brainless beast of
Balzac's, hang it all!" expostulated the champion. He turned eagerly to
the Colonel. "Now you've seen her, sir, would you?"

"Not exactly. And I'm bound to say, I regard your claim to the possession
of good taste as completely established.... 'Ware the horse, there! Look
out! look out!" His eyes had followed the tall figure of the
Mother-Superior, moving with the superlative grace and ease that comes of
perfect physical proportion, carrying the black nun's robes, wearing the
flowing veil of the nun with the dignity of an ideal queen. And the next
instant, his charger, held with some others by a mounted orderly before
the gates, and rendered nervous by the pressure of the crowd, shied at the
towering _panache_ of imitation grass-made ostrich feathers trailing from
the aged and crownless pot-hat worn by a headman of the Barala in holiday
attire, jerked the bridle from the hand of the trooper, and backed,
rearing, in the direction of the three women passing on the sidewalk. The
other horses shied, frustrating the efforts of the orderly to catch the
flying bridle, and the danger from the huge, towering brown body and
dangling iron-shod hoofs was very real, seemed inevitable, when a man in
white drill and wearing a Panama hat ran out of the crowd, sprang up and
deftly caught the loose bridoon-rein, mastered the frightened beast, and
dragged it back into the roadway, in time to avert harm.

"Cleverly done, but a close thing," the Chief said, as he turned away. "_I
wish I had had that fellow's chance!_" was written in Beauvayse's face. To
have won a look of gratitude from those wonderful black-fringed eyes,
brought a flush of admiration into those white-rose cheeks, would have
been worth while. The slight, tall, girlish figure in its dainty creamy
draperies had passed out of sight now between its two black-robed
guardians. And had not Luck, that mutable-minded deity, given the golden
chance to a hulking stranger in white drill, his, Beauvayse's, might have
been the hand to intervene in the matter of