ssity for action.' But she was talking to a soldier! 'I mean,
their heads are opening.' It sounded ludicrous. 'They are educating
themselves differently.' Were they? 'They wish to take their part in
the work of the world.' That was nearer the proper tone, though it had
a ring of claptrap rhetoric hateful to her: she had read it and shrunk
from it in reports of otherwise laudable meetings.

'Well, spirited, yes. I think they are. I believe they are. One has need
to hope so.'

Philip offered a polite affirmative, evidently formal.

Not a sign had he shown of noticing her state of scarlet. His grave
liquid eyes were unalterable. She might have been grateful, but the
reflection that she had made a step to unlock the antechamber of her
dearest deepest matters to an ordinary military officer, whose notions
of women were probably those of his professional brethren, impelled her
to transfer his polished decorousness to the burden of his masculine
antagonism-plainly visible. She brought the dialogue to a close. Colonel
Adister sidled an eye at a three-quarter view of her face. 'I fancy
you're feeling the heat of the room,' he said.

Jane acknowledged a sensibility to some degree of warmth.

The colonel was her devoted squire on the instant for any practical
service. His appeal to his aunt concerning one of the windows was
answered by her appeal to Jane's countenance for a disposition to rise
and leave the gentlemen. Captain Con, holding the door for the passage
of his wife and her train of ladies, received the injunction:

'Ten,' from her, and remarked: 'Minutes,' as he shut it. The shortness
of the period of grace proposed dejection to him on the one hand, and on
the other a stimulated activity to squeeze it for its juices without any
delay. Winding past Dr. Forbery to the vacated seat of the hostess he
frowned forbiddingly.

'It's I, is it!' cried the doctor. Was it ever he that endangered the
peace and placability of social gatherings! He sat down prepared
rather for a bout with Captain Con than with their common opponents,
notwithstanding that he had accurately read the mock thunder of his
brows.

CHAPTER XIV. OF ROCKNEY

Battles have been won and the streams of History diverted to new
channels in the space of ten minutes. Ladies have been won, a fresh
posterity founded, and grand financial schemes devised, revolts
arranged, a yoke shaken off, in less of mortal time. Excepting an
inspired Epic song and an or