nning to feel more at
ease after the mysterious estrangement and this sudden reappearance of
her old friend, Jean, too, was to be called away and the pair be left
alone. Arch plotters that these women are! They had chosen the hour
when the doctor almost invariably took his siesta, and both ladies had
warned their friends on no account to select that opportunity to rush
over and congratulate the lieutenant on his convalescence,--a thing the
Gordon girls would have been sure to do. Miss Bruce had gone so far as
to ask Mrs. Miller if she did not think it might be well to "post" Miss
Forrest, who had been almost daily seen conversing with Mr. McLean
since he began to sit out on the gallery again; but Mrs. Miller
promptly replied that there was no need to tell Miss Forrest anything.
"She has more sense than all of the rest of us put together," were the
surprising words of the reply, "as I have excellent reasons to know."

What could have happened to so radically change Mrs. Miller's estimate
of and regard for the "Queen of Bedlam?" was Jean Bruce's natural
question of her mother that night, and Mrs. Bruce was in a quandary how
to answer and not betray the secret that had been confided to her. From
having avoided and distrusted Miss Fanny Forrest, it was now noticeable
to the entire garrison that Mrs. Miller was exerting herself to be more
than civil.

It was too late to change the plan of the afternoon's campaign when the
major's orderly came around to Dr. Bayard's with the compliments of the
commanding officer and a request that the doctor join him at his
quarters as soon as possible. Although he was gone nearly an hour, he
returned before McLean had been with the girls more than a quarter of
that time, and changed their apprehension into wonderment and secret
joy by the extreme--almost oppressive--courtesy of manner to his
unbidden guest.

"It was just as though he was trying to make amends for something," said
Miss Bruce, in telling of it afterward. Be that as it may, it is certain
that after urging McLean to take a good rest where he was and to come
again and "sun himself" on their piazza, and being unaccountably cordial
in his monologue (for the younger officer hardly knew how to express
himself under the circumstances), the doctor finally vanished. Jeannie
Bruce was so utterly "taken aback" by it all that for some minutes she
totally forgot her part in the little drama. Then, suddenly recalling
the _role_ she was to