If Neroda had been puzzled at Anita’s inability he was now surprised at her strength.  She stood up to her full height and the bow was firm in her grasp.  Neroda was a hard master, but Anita succeeded in pleasing him.  Even Kettle, who had an artistic rivalry with Neroda, passing the drawing-room door, cried: 

“Lord, Miss ‘Nita, you kin play the fiddle mos’ as well as I kin.”

As Mrs. Fortescue was putting the last touches to her toilette before the long mirror in her own room, Colonel Fortescue came in, dressed to go down-stairs.  The Colonel’s mind had been working on the problems of Broussard’s visit to Mrs. Lawrence, and the look he had noticed for some time past in Anita’s eyes when Broussard was present, or even when his name was mentioned.

“I am afraid, Betty,” said the Colonel, “that Anita thinks too much and too often of Broussard.  And in spite of that trick of horsemanship there are some things a trifle unsatisfactory about him.”

“Really, Jack,” answered Mrs. Fortescue, “you take Anita’s moods far too seriously.  The girl will have her little affairs as other girls have theirs.  It’s like measles and chicken-pox and other infantile diseases.”

“Not for Anita,” said Colonel Fortescue, “that child has in her tragic possibilities.  Her heart is brittle, depend upon it.”

“So are all hearts,” replied Mrs. Fortescue, “but you are so ridiculously sentimental and lackadaisical about Anita!”

“She is my one ewe lamb,” said the Colonel.

Then they went down-stairs together, and the next minute Anita appeared, wearing a gown of white and silver, with a delicious little train, which she managed as well as a seventeen-year-old could manage a train.

In a minute or two the guests began arriving.  They were handsome, middle-aged officers and dignified matrons.  Broussard was the only young man present, which was understood as a special compliment to him, and Anita was the only young girl in the company.

Broussard greeted the Colonel as coolly as if that unlucky meeting just outside of Lawrence’s quarters had not occurred two hours before.  And Broussard was a captivating, fellow—­this the Colonel admitted to himself, with an inward groan, watching Broussard’s graceful figure, his dashing manner, all these externals that dazzle women.  The Colonel also saw the color that flooded Anita’s face when she took Broussard’s arm to lead her in to dinner.  At the table, though, Broussard found Anita strangely unlike the Anita he had been steadily falling in love with since he first saw her, three months before, when Colonel Fortescue took command at Fort Blizzard.  She was no longer the dreamy, mysterious child, who knew all the stories of the poets, whose affections were all passions, but a self-possessed young lady, who read things in the newspapers about the European war and knew something about aviation records, although she hated aviation.