“Yes,” said Miss Van Hook, “young people seem to feel those things.”

“Of course he’s going to get over it.  That’s what young people do too.  At his age he can’t help being caught with every pretty face and every pretty figure, even in the midst of his woe, and it’s only a question of time till he seizes some pretty hand and gets drawn out of it altogether.”

“I think that would be the case with my niece, too,” said Miss Van Hook, “if she wasn’t kept in it by a sense of loyalty.  I don’t believe she really dares much for Lieutenant Willing any more; but he sees no society where he’s stationed, of course, and his constancy is a—­a rebuke and a—­a—­an incentive to her.  They were engaged a long time ago just after he left West Point—­and we’ve always been in hopes that he would be removed to some post where he could meet other ladies and become interested in some one else.  But he never has, and so the affair remains.  It’s most undesirable they should marry, and in the meantime she won’t break it off, and it’s spoiling her chances in life.”

“It is too bad,” sighed Mrs. Brinkley, “but of course you can do nothing.  I see that.”

“No, we can do nothing.  We have tried everything.  I used to think it was because she was so dull there at Yonkers with her family, and brooded upon the one idea all the time, that she could not get over it; and at first it did seem when she came to me that she would get over it.  She is very fond of gaiety—­of young men’s society, and she’s had plenty of little flirtations that didn’t mean anything, and never amounted to anything.  Every now and then a letter would come from the wilds where he was stationed, and spoil it all.  She seemed to feel a sort of chivalrous obligation because he was so far off and helpless and lonely.”

“Yes, I understand,” said Mrs. Brinkley.  “What a pity she couldn’t be made to feel that that didn’t deepen the obligation at all.”

“I’ve tried to make her,” said Miss Van Hook, “and I’ve been everywhere with her.  One winter we were up the Nile, and another in Nice, and last winter we were in Rome.  She met young men everywhere, and had offers upon offers; but it was of no use.  She remained just the same, and till she met Mr. Mavering in Washington I don’t believe—­”

Miss Van Hook stopped, and Mrs. Brinkley said, “And yet she always seemed to me particularly practical and level-headed—­as the men say.”

“So she is.  But she is really very romantic about some things; and when it comes to a matter of that kind, girls are about all alike, don’t you think?”

“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Brinkley hopelessly, and both ladies looked out over the water, where the waves came rolling in one after another to waste themselves on the shore as futilely as if they had been lives.

In the evening Miss Anderson got two letters from the clerk, at the hour when the ladies all flocked to his desk with the eagerness for letters which is so engaging in them.  One she pulled open and glanced at with a sort of impassioned indifference; the other she read in one intense moment, and then ran it into her pocket, and with her hand still on it hurried vividly flushing to her room, and read and read it again with constantly mounting emotion.