With which oracular remark she adjourned to her dressing-room, where, in long rows, her lovely gowns were hung.

Leila, left alone, picked up a magazine on the table beside her glanced through it and laid it down; picked a bonbon daintily out of a big box and ate it; picked up a photograph——­

“Mousie,” said Lilah, coming back, several minutes later, “what makes you so still?  Did you find a book?”

No, Leila had not found a book, and the photograph was back where she had first discovered it, face downward under the box of chocolates.  And she was now standing by the window, her veil drawn tightly over her close little hat, so that one might not read the trouble in her telltale eyes.  The daisy drooped now, as if withered by the blazing sun.

But Delilah saw nothing of the change.  She wore a saffron-hued coat, which matched the roses in the other room, and her leopard skins, with a small hat of the same fur.

As she surveyed herself finally in the long glass, she flung out the somewhat caustic remark: 

“When I get down-stairs and look at Mary Ballard, I shall feel like a Beardsley poster propped up beside a Helleu etching.”

After lunch, Porter took Aunt Isabelle and Barry and the three girls to Fort Myer.  The General and Mr. Jeliffe met them at the drill hall, and as they entered there came to them the fresh fragrance of the tan bark.

As the others filed into their seats, Barry held Leila back.  “We will sit at the end,” he said.  “I want to talk to you.”

Through her veil, her eyes reproached him.

“No,” she said; “no.”

He looked down at her in surprise.  Never before had Little-Lovely Leila refused the offer of his valuable society.

“You sit beside—­Delilah,” she said, nervously, “She’s really your guest.”

“She is Porter’s guest,” he declared.  “I don’t see why you want to turn her over to me.”  Then as she endeavored to pass him, he caught her arm.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” faintly,

“Nothing——­” scornfully.  “I can read you like a book.  What’s happened?”

But she merely shook her head and sat down, and then the bugle sounded, and the band began to play, and in came the cavalry—­a gallant company, through the sun-lighted door, charging in a thundering line toward the reviewing stand—­to stop short in a perfect and sudden salute.

The drill followed, with men riding bareback, men riding four abreast, men riding in pyramids, men turning somersaults on their trained and intelligent steeds.

One man slipped, fell from his horse, and lay close in the tan bark, while the other horses went over him, without a hoof touching, so that he rose unhurt, and took his place again in the line.

Leila hid her eyes in her muff.  “I don’t like it,” she said.  “I’ve never liked it.  And what if that man had been killed?”