utor awaiting her. "As I know Mr. Forrest to be
otherwise engaged to-night, Miss Wallen, I have ventured to offer my
services as escort," said he, and though she shrank from and could not
bear him, there was no reason at that time for denying him; but when he
presently began talking of Forrest in his suggestive, insinuating way,
and excusing his references to the lieutenant on the ground of his
extreme regard for her widowed mother, her impoverished but amiable
relatives, and her own refined, intellectual, and accomplished self, she
shrank still more and strove to silence him,--a difficult matter. She
had, however, a trait that proved simply exasperating to a man of
Elmendorf's calibre,--a faculty of listening in absolute silence where
she did not desire to confirm or approve,--and when he had spent much
breath and nearly half an hour in descanting upon his impressions of the
demoralizing tendencies of military associations in general and of idle
officers in particular, it rasped him to find that she did not seem to
consider his views worthy the faintest comment; nor would she nor did
she invite him in. When her mother reproved her for this, Miss Wallen
smiled, and said, "Next time I will, and then you might ask him for the
three weeks' lodging he hasn't paid," and Mart said she ought to be
ashamed of speaking so of a man who had done everything for her. She'd
never have got that library place at all if it hadn't been for
Elmendorf, no matter what her fine friends might have told her. Oh, Mart
knew all about it; needn't try to pull the wool over his eyes! Another
time had Elmendorf come, and again had he talked more of what he had
done for her and the rights it gave him to tender her counsel, and this
time his references to Forrest took a graver form and became offensive.
It was then, indignant, she refused to hear more of it, and that night
Elmendorf went away gritting his teeth, and now had come this
contemptible essay to humiliate her before her employer. Oh, it was
cowardly! shameful! She threw up her arms, clinching her little white
hands and stamping as slender a foot as ever walked in a machine-made
shoe, and then, ejaculating, as women will, in moments of supreme
exasperation, "If I were only a man!" whirled about and beheld one.

"In your present mood," said Mr. Forrest, quietly, "I am rather glad you
are not, especially as what I have to say refers to you rather in your
capacity as 'the clever woman of the fami