other, for whom he cared most. General Wood and
Helen Harley were across the table, her pure eyes looking up with
manifest pleasure into the dark ones of the leader, which could shine so
fiercely on the battlefield but were now so soft. Once Prescott caught
the General's glance and it was full of wonder; intrigue and the cross
play of feminine purposes were unknown worlds to the simple mountaineer.

Prescott passed from silence to a feverish and uncertain gaiety, talking
more than any one at the table, an honour that he seldom coveted. Some
of his jests and epigrams were good and more were bad; but all passed
current at such a time, and Mrs. Markham, who was never at a loss for
something to say, seconded him in able fashion. The Secretary, listening
and looking, smiled quietly. "Gone to his head; foolish fellow," was
what his manner clearly expressed. Prescott himself saw it at last and
experienced a sudden check, remembering his resolve to fight this man
with his own weapons, while here he was only an hour later behaving like
a wild boy on his first escapade. He passed at once from garrulity to
silence, and the contrast was so marked that the glances exchanged by
the others increased.

Prescott was still taciturn when at a late hour he helped Mrs. Markham
into the phaeton and they started to her home. He fully expected that
Harley would overtake him when he turned away from her house and seek a
quarrel, but the fear of physical harm scarcely entered into his mind.
It was the gossip and the linking of names in the gossip that troubled
him.

Mrs. Markham sat as close to him as ever--the little phaeton had grown
no wider--but though he felt again her warm breath on his cheek, no
pulse stirred.

"Why are you so silent, Captain Prescott?" she asked. "Are you thinking
of Lucia Catherwood?"

"Yes," he replied frankly, "I was."

She glanced up at him, but his face was hidden in the darkness.

"She was looking very beautiful to-night," she said, "and she was
supreme; all the men--and must I say it, all of us women,
too--acknowledged her rule. But I do not wonder that she attracts the
masculine mind--her beauty, her bearing, her mysterious past, constitute
the threefold charm to which all of you men yield, Captain Prescott. I
wish I knew her history."

"It could be to her credit only," said Prescott.

She glanced up at him again, and now the moonlight falling on his face
enabled her to see it set and firm, and Mrs. Ma