for Anne.
She threw her arms around her friend without more ado.

"Don't quarrel with me, Jinny," she said tearfully. "I couldn't bear it.
He--Mr. Brice is not coming, I am sure."

Virginia disengaged herself.

"He is not coming?"

"No," said Anne. "You asked me if he was invited. And I was going on to
tell you that he could not come."

She stopped, and stared at Virginia in bewilderment. That young lady,
instead of beaming, had turned her back. She stood flicking her whip at
the window, gazing out over the trees, down the slope to the river. Miss
Russell might have interpreted these things. Simple Anne!

"Why isn't he coming?" said Virginia, at last.

"Because he is to be one of the speakers at a big meeting that night.
Have you seen him since you got home, Jinny? He is thinner than he
was. We are much worried about him, because he has worked so hard this
summer."

"A Black Republican meeting!" exclaimed Virginia, scornfully ignoring
the rest of what was said. "Then I'll come, Anne dear," she cried,
tripping the length of the room. "I'll come as Titania. Who will you
be?"

She cantered off down the drive and out of the gate, leaving a very
puzzled young woman watching her from the window. But when Virginia
reached the forest at the bend of the road, she pulled her horse down to
a walk.

She bethought herself of the gown which her Uncle Daniel had sent her
from Calvert House, and of the pearls. And she determined to go as her
great-grandmother, Dorothy Carvel.

Shades of romance! How many readers will smile before the rest of this
true incident is told?

What had happened was this. Miss Anne Brinsmade had driven to town in
her mother's Jenny Lind a day or two before, and had stopped (as she
often did) to pay a call on Mrs. Brice. This lady, as may be guessed,
was not given to discussion of her husband's ancestors, nor of her
own. But on the walls of the little dining-room hung a Copley and two
Stuarts. One of the Stuarts was a full length of an officer in the buff
and blue of the Continental Army. And it was this picture which caught
Anne's eye that day.

"How like Stephen!" she exclaimed. And added. "Only the face is much
older. Who is it, Mrs. Brice?"

"Colonel Wilton Brice, Stephen's grandfather. There is a marked
look about all the Brices. He was only twenty years of age when the
Revolution began. That picture was painted much later in life, after
Stuart came back to America, when the Colonel wa