uction while we dine, or sup. Do
say you are hungry."

"I have not eaten a morsel since luncheon," she confessed.

"Oh, joy! I must interview the head waiter. No common serf will
suffice. Please hurry."

She left him, not without an impulsive movement as though she meant to
utter some further words of thanks, but checked her intent on the very
threshold of speech. As the lock of the bedroom door clicked, and he
was alone, he essayed a review of the amazing sequence of events which
had befallen since he strolled out of the dining-room of the Central
Hotel. He stood there, motionless, with hands plunged deep in his
pockets, but, at the outset of a reverie in which judgment and prudence
might have helped in the council, he happened to catch sight of himself
in an oblong mirror over the mantelpiece, for the apartment, redolent
of New York's later architecture, contained an open grate, and was
furnished with the chaste beauty of the Chippendale period. In his
present position the reflection in the mirror was oddly reminiscent of
a half-length portrait of his grandfather, the warrior who rode at the
head of the Fifth Cavalry in '61.

Then Curtis laughed, with the pleasant conviction of a man whose mind
has been made up for him by circumstances beyond his control.

"It's bred in the bone--a clear case of Mendelism," he murmured softly,
because he had just remembered how Colonel Curtis, before ever the war
was ended and its bitterness assuaged, had decided a Southern girl's
conflict between love and duty by galloping fifty miles across
Confederate South Carolina and carrying off the lady.

Grandfather and grandson alike were men of action. Curtis seldom used
a gesture, and never cried over spilt milk. Now he merely turned,
peered into his own bedroom, assured himself that Hermione would find
its prototype to her fancy, and then summoned a waiter.

Behind the closed door of the other room a girl was similarly engaged
in taking stock of the situation; but she had feminine assistance, so
there was bound to be talk.

"Oh, your ladyship, isn't this just the dandiest bit out of a novel you
ever read?" cried Marcelle when she entered her mistress's room through
a communicating door.

"It might be more thrilling if it were not a page out of my own life,"
said Hermione sadly. She, too, was gazing in a mirror, though, being a
woman, the oppressive thought bobbed up through a sea of troubles that
her hair must be unti