questioner. But let me get you a chair. Even when on picket duty and
challenging each new comer, you are allowed a more restful attitude
than your present one, I hope. You startled me into forgetting--"

"_I_ startled _you_? Well!"

"Oh, yes. I was the one to do the bouncing out and nabbing you, wasn't
I? Well, now, I can't believe you were the more frightened of the two,
for all that. Have this chair, please; it is the most comfortable. You
see, I fancied Raquel had changed under my touch from dusky brown to
angelic white. The hat hid your face, you know, until you turned
around, and then--"

"Well?" At the first tone of compliment she had forgotten all the
strangeness of their meeting, and remembered only the coquetry so
naturally her own. With or without the uniform of her country, he was
at least a man, and there had been a dearth of men about their
plantation, "The Terrace," of late.

"Well," he repeated after her, "when you tipped the hat back I thought
in a wink of all the fairy stories of transformation I used to hear
told by the old folks in Ireland."

"Do you really mean that you believe fairy stories?" Her tone was
severe and her expression chiding.

"On my faith I believed them all that minute."

Her eyes dropped to the toe of her slipper. It was all very
delightful, this tete-a-tete with the complimentary unknown, and to be
thought a fairy! She wished she had gone up with Aunt Sajane and
brushed her hair. Still--

"I was sure it was Mr. Loring who had hold of me until I looked
around," she confessed, "and that frightened me just as much as the
wickedest fairy or goblin could ever do."

"Indeed, now, would it?"

She glanced around to see if her indiscreet speech had been overheard
and then nodded assent.

"Oh, you needn't smile," she protested; and his face at once became
comically grave. "_You_ didn't have him for a bug-a-boo when you were
little, as I did. That doctor of his gave orders that no one was to
see him just now, and I am glad Gertrude will be back before we are
admitted. With Gertrude to back me up I could be brave as--as--"

"A sheep," suggested the stranger.

"I was going to say a lion, but lions are big, and I'm not very."

"No, you are not," he agreed. "Sad, isn't it?"

Then they both laughed. She was elated, bubbling over with delight, at
meeting some one in Loringwood who actually laughed.

"Gertrude's note last night never told us she had company, and I had
gloomy f