[Illustration:  “Don’t call your father ‘the poor old chap,’” said Mrs. Fortescue positively.]

“But Anita is so young—­a chit, a child.”

“She is not quite three years younger than you,” replied Mrs. Fortescue.  “This notion that Anita is a child and must be treated as such is ridiculous.  Why, when I was Anita’s age, I had had a dozen love affairs.”

“Did no one ever tell you, mother, that you are a born coquette, and you will be coquettish at ninety, if you live to bless us so long?”

Mrs. Fortescue laughed the soft, musical laugh that was a part of her armory of charms, and made no reply.

At dinner that night Beverley suddenly began to ask questions about Broussard, praising his horsemanship, but wanting to know what kind of a fellow he was.  The Colonel spoke guardedly and damned Broussard with faint praise, as he would any man whom he thought likely to rob him of his one ewe lamb; yet the Colonel thought himself a just man.

The eloquent blood leaped into Anita’s cheeks, and there was something like resentment in her eyes at the Colonel’s cool commendation.  After dinner she took Beverley into the garden, and the brother and sister walked up and down in the moonlight, and Anita, thinking she was keeping her secret, revealed everything to Beverley.  Broussard was the finest young officer, the most beautiful horseman, he could sing Koerner’s Battle Hymn as no one else could, and when she played a violin obligato to his songs of love——­

Anita stopped short, and turned her long-lashed eyes full on Beverley.

“Daddy doesn’t do justice to Mr. Broussard,” she said, “but you ought to have seen the way he grasped Mr. Broussard’s hands after the music ride.”

Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue, sitting in the cool, dim drawing-room, heard Beverley’s laughter floating in from the garden.  Beverley saw the case at a glance.

The torrid summer slipped by, and in November it was winter again, and the earth was snowbound once more.  In all those months Mrs. Lawrence remained, feeble and nerveless, in the two little rooms she was still permitted to occupy.  By that time she was a shadow.  Mrs. McGillicuddy was more kind than ever to her, and Sergeant McGillicuddy grew more sombre every day, thinking that his words had brought Lawrence to ruin and his unfortunate wife close to the boundaries of the far country.  The chaplain took the Sergeant in hand, and so did the Colonel, but the Sergeant, who had a tender heart under his well-fitting uniform, was not a happy man.  Anita went regularly to see Mrs. Lawrence, and as the young are appalled at the thought of life going out, she watched with palpitating fear what seemed a steady journey toward the land where spirits dwell.  But always on those visits to the woman who seemed slipping from life into the great ocean of forgetfulness, there was a thrill of joy for Anita; she could see Broussard’s picture.  Young and imaginative souls live and thrive on very little.