“I will tell Uncle Jim.  You will be at the hop of course?  I have been thinking of nothing else for a week.”

“I may be late.”

“Oh, why?”

“We are in the midst of our examinations.  Even to get time for a walk with you and uncle was hard.  I wrote Uncle Jim not to come now.  He must have missed it.”

“And so I am to suffer.”

“I doubt the anguish,” he returned, laughing, as he touched his cap, and left her to brief consideration of the cadet cousin.

“Uncle Jim might have been just like that—­looked like that.  They are very unlike too.  I used to be able to tell just what Jack would do when we were children—­don’t think I can now.  How tall he is and how handsome.  The uniform is becoming.  I wonder if I too am so greatly changed.”

It is well here to betray the secrets of the novelists’ confessional.  Leila Grey had seen in the South much of an interesting society where love affairs were brief, lightly taken, easily ended, or hardly more than the mid-air flirtations of butterflies.  No such perilous approaches to the most intimate relations of men and women were for this young woman, on whom the love and tactful friendship of the married life of Grey Pine had left a lasting impression.  One must have known her well to become aware of the sense of duty to her ideals which lay behind her alert appearance of joyous gaiety and capacity to see the mirthful aspects of life.  Once long ago the lad’s moment of passionate longing had but lightly stirred the dreamless sleep of unawakened power to love.  Even the memory of John’s boy-folly had faded with time.  Her relation to him had been little more than warm friendship.  Even that tie—­and she was abruptly aware of it—­had become less close.  She was directly conscious of the fact and wondered if this grave young man felt as she did.  She lay awake that night and wondered too if his ideals of heroism and ambition were still actively present, and where too was his imagination—­ever on the wing and far beyond her mental flight?  She also had changed.  Did he know it or care?  Then she dismissed him and fell asleep.

As John Penhallow near to noon came out a little weary and anxious from the examination ordeal, he chanced on his uncle and Leila waiting with the officer of the day, who said to him, “After dinner you are free for the rest of the afternoon.  Mr. Penhallow has asked me to relieve you.”

As he bade them good-morning, his uncle said, “How goes the examination?”

“Don’t ask me yet, sir; but I cannot go home until the end of next week.  Then I shall know the result.”

“But what examination remains?” persisted the Squire.

“Don’t ask him, Uncle Jim.”

“Well—­all right.”

“Thank you, Leila.  I am worn out.  I am glad of a let-up.  I dream equations and pontoon bridges—­and I must do some work after dinner.  Then I will find you and Uncle Jim on Fort Putnam, at five.”