s 'Nita, you kin play the fiddle mos' as well as I kin."

As Mrs. Fortescue was putting the last touches to her toilette before
the long mirror in her own room, Colonel Fortescue came in, dressed to
go down-stairs. The Colonel's mind had been working on the problems of
Broussard's visit to Mrs. Lawrence, and the look he had noticed for
some time past in Anita's eyes when Broussard was present, or even when
his name was mentioned.

"I am afraid, Betty," said the Colonel, "that Anita thinks too much and
too often of Broussard. And in spite of that trick of horsemanship
there are some things a trifle unsatisfactory about him."

"Really, Jack," answered Mrs. Fortescue, "you take Anita's moods far
too seriously. The girl will have her little affairs as other girls
have theirs. It's like measles and chicken-pox and other infantile
diseases."

"Not for Anita," said Colonel Fortescue, "that child has in her tragic
possibilities. Her heart is brittle, depend upon it."

"So are all hearts," replied Mrs. Fortescue, "but you are so
ridiculously sentimental and lackadaisical about Anita!"

"She is my one ewe lamb," said the Colonel.

Then they went down-stairs together, and the next minute Anita
appeared, wearing a gown of white and silver, with a delicious little
train, which she managed as well as a seventeen-year-old could manage a
train.

In a minute or two the guests began arriving. They were handsome,
middle-aged officers and dignified matrons. Broussard was the only
young man present, which was understood as a special compliment to him,
and Anita was the only young girl in the company.

Broussard greeted the Colonel as coolly as if that unlucky meeting just
outside of Lawrence's quarters had not occurred two hours before. And
Broussard was a captivating, fellow--this the Colonel admitted to
himself, with an inward groan, watching Broussard's graceful figure,
his dashing manner, all these externals that dazzle women. The Colonel
also saw the color that flooded Anita's face when she took Broussard's
arm to lead her in to dinner. At the table, though, Broussard found
Anita strangely unlike the Anita he had been steadily falling in love
with since he first saw her, three months before, when Colonel
Fortescue took command at Fort Blizzard. She was no longer the dreamy,
mysterious child, who knew all the stories of the poets, whose
affections were all passions, but a self-possessed young lady, who read
things