red; a quiver twitched his set features.

"Nevertheless--" he said, partly to himself. Then, drawing a long
breath, he turned, unhooked his sabre from a nail where it hung,
buckled his belt, picked up the lance which stood slanting across a
chair, shook out the scarlet, swallow-tailed pennon, and walked
slowly toward the door--and met Letty coming in.

"Mrs. Paige," she said, "we couldn't imagine what had become of
you--" and glancing inquiringly at Berkley, started, and uttered a
curious little cry:

"You!"

"Yes," he said, smiling through his own astonishment.

"Oh!" she cried with a happy catch in her voice, and held out both
hands to him; and he laid aside his lance and took them, laughing
down into the velvet eyes. And he saw the gray garb of Sainte
Ursula that she wore, saw the scarlet heart on her breast, and
laughed again--a kindly, generous, warm-hearted laugh; but there
was a little harmless malice glimmering in his eyes.

"Wonderful--wonderful, Miss Lynden"--he had never before called her
Miss Lynden--"I am humbly overcome in the presence of Holy Sainte
Ursula embodied in you. How on earth did old Benton ever permit
you to escape? He wrote me most enthusiastically about you before
I--ahem--left town."

"Why didn't you let me know where you were going?" asked Letty with
a reproachful simplicity that concentrated Ailsa's amazed attention
on her, for she had been looking scornfully at Berkley.

"Why--you are very kind, Miss Lynden, but I, myself, didn't know
where I was going."

"I--I wanted to write you," began Letty; and suddenly remembered
Ailsa's presence and turned, shyly:

"Mrs. Paige," she said, "this private soldier is Mr. Berkley--a
gentleman. May I be permitted to present him to you?"

And there, while the tragic and comic masks grinned side by side,
and the sky and earth seemed unsteadily grinning above and under
her feet, Ailsa Paige suffered the mockery of the presentation;
felt the terrible irony of it piercing her; felt body and senses
swaying there in the candle-light; heard Letty's happy voice and
Berkley's undisturbed replies; found courage to speak, to take her
leave; made her way back through a dreadful thickening darkness to
her room, to her bed, and lay there silent, because she could not
weep.

CHAPTER XII

In February the birds sang between flurries of snow; but the end of
the month was warm and lovely, and robins, bluebirds, and cardinals
burst into a torren