“Officer and gentleman,” she smiled.

The chance compliment came to me like a blow.  I was not an officer.  I was masking, mumming, I, John Cowles, who had no right.  Once more, whither was my folly carrying me?  Suddenly I felt saddened.

“I shall call you The Sorrowful Knight,” chided my fair companion.”

“Quite as well as any name, my very good friend.”

“I am not your friend.”

“No, and indeed, perhaps, never may be.”

Her spirit caught the chill of this, and at once she motioned the edge of the floor.

“Now I must go,” she said.  “There are very many to whom I am promised.”  I looked at her and could very well believe the truth of that.  Many things revolved in my mind.  I wondered whether if after all Kitty had had her way; wondered if this was the mysterious Ellen, and if after all she had also had her way!  Ah, I had fallen easily!

“Sir Sorrowful,” she said, “take me back.”  She extended a little hand and a round arm, whose beauty I could fully catch.  The long mousquetaires of later days were then not known, but her hands stood perfectly the trying test of white kids that ended short at the wrist.

Reluctantly I moved away with her from the merry throng upon the pavilion floor.  At the edge of the better lighted circle she paused for a moment, standing straight and drawing a full, deep breath.  If that were coquetry it was perfect.  I swear that now I caught the full outline of a red, red heart upon her corsage!

“Mademoiselle,” I said, as I left her, “you are Ellen, and you have a heart!  At half past ten I shall come again.  Some day I shall take away your mask and your heart.”

“Oh, thank thee!” she mocked again.

At half past ten I had kept my word, and I stood once more at the Row of Mystery.  The chairs were vacant, for the blue coats had wrought havoc there!  A little apart sat a blonde beauty of petite figure, who talked in a deep contralto voice, astonishing for one so slight, with a young lieutenant who leaned close to her.  I selected her for Tudie Devlin of Kentucky.  She whom I fancied to be the “Evans girl from up North,” was just promenading away with a young man in evening dress.  A brunette whom I imagined to be Sadie Galloway of the Ninth was leaning on the back of a chair and conversing with a man whom I could not see, hidden in the shade of a tent fold.  I looked behind me and saw a row of disgruntled gentlemen, nervously pacing up and down.  At least there were others disappointed!

I searched the dancing floor and presently wished I had not done so.  I saw her once more—­dancing with a tall, slender man in uniform.  At least he offered no disguise to me.  In my heart I resented seeing him wear the blue of our government.  And certainly it gave me some pang to which I was not entitled, which I did not stop to analyze, some feeling of wretchedness, to see this girl dancing with none less than Gordon Orme, minister of the Gospel, captain of the English Army, and what other inconsistent things I knew not!