st find some other means of making her respect my wishes."

"I suppose you will try and blacken her character and have her sent out
of the post, and so rob us of the last relic I have of my home and
f-f-friends," and Mrs. Forrest began to sob afresh.

"Hush! Ruth. I hear the doctor in the hall below. For goodness' sake,
do try and look a little less like a modern Niobe when he comes up.
Here, take baby," and she hugged the little fellow close and imprinted
a kiss upon his dimpled cheek. "I must run down and detain him a moment
until you can get straightened out."

Nothing loath was Dr. Bayard to spend some moments in _tete-a-tete_
converse with Miss Forrest. She ushered him into the dining-room,--the
only reception-room the two households could boast of under the stress
of circumstances, and most graciously received his compliments on the
"conquests" of the previous evening. "Not only all eyes, all hearts
were charmed, Miss Forrest. Never even in the palmiest days of
Washington society have I seen more elegant and becoming a toilet, and
as for your singing,--it was simply divine." The doctor looked, as
well as spoke, his well-turned phrases. He was gallant, debonair,
dignified, impressive,--"a well-preserved fellow for forty-five," as
he was wont to say of himself. He anxiously inquired for her health,
deplored the state of anxiety and excitement in which they were
compelled to live, thanked heaven that there were some consolations
vouchsafed them in their exile and isolation, and begged her to be
sure and send for him should she find the strain was telling upon her
nervous system; it was marvellous that she should bear up so well; his
little daughter was really ill this morning and unable to leave her
room, but then she was a mere child. If it were not for the
incomparable pleasure he--they all--found in her presence he could
almost wish that Miss Forrest were once more under the shelter of her
uncle's hospitable roof in New York and "free from war's alarms." By
the way, where was Mr.--a--her uncle's residence?

"Mr. Courtlandt's?" she answered, promptly supplying the name. "In
Thirty-fourth Street, just east of the avenue."

"To be sure; I know it well," answered the doctor. "A most refined and
aristocratic neighborhood it is, and I'm sure I must have met Mr.
Courtlandt at the Union Club. He is near kin, I think, to the Van
Cortlandts, of Croton, is he not?"

"Not very near, doctor, though I presume there is som