does her face brighten when she sees me, and her
little hand thrust itself confidingly forth from under its shrouding
mantle and grasp mine with such a lingering and entreating pressure?
And the Colonel? Does he realize, too, that I am any more to her than
her other cast-off lovers and would-be friends? Sometimes I think he
does, and eyes me with suspicion. But he is ever so courteous that I
cannot be sure, and so do not trouble myself in regard to a jealousy
so illy founded and so easily dispelled.

He is always at Juliet's side and seems to surround her with a
devotion which will make it very difficult for any other man, even
Orrin, to get her ear.

* * * * *

The crisis is approaching. Orrin is again in town, and may be seen
riding up and down the streets in his holiday clothes. Have some
whispers of his secret love and evident intentions reached the ear of
the Colonel? Or is Juliet's father alone concerned? For I see that the
blinds of her lattice are tightly shut, and watch as I may, I cannot
catch a glimpse of her eager head peering between them at the
flaunting horseman as he goes careering by.

* * * * *

The hour has come and how different is the outcome from any I had
imagined. I was sitting last night in my own lonely little room, which
opens directly on the street, struggling as best I might against the
distraction of my thoughts which would lead me from the book I was
studying, when a knock on the panels of my door aroused me, and almost
before I could look up, that same door swung open and a dark form
entered and stood before me.

For a moment I was too dazed to see who it was, and rising
ceremoniously, I made my bow of welcome, starting a little as I met
the Colonel's dark eyes looking at me from the folds of the huge
mantle in which he had wrapped himself. "Your worship?" I began, and
stumbling awkwardly, offered him a chair which he refused with a
gesture of his smooth white hand.

"Thank you, no," said he, "I do not sit down in your house till I know
if it is you who have stolen the heart of my bride away from me and if
it is you with whom she is prepared to flee."

"Ah," was my involuntary exclamation, "then it has come. You know her
folly, and will forgive it because she is such a child."

"Her folly? Are you not then the man?" he cried; but in a subdued tone
which showed what a restraint he was putting upon himself even in the