The hostess smiled in response to the girl’s enthusiasm.  “’T is certain he refused you nothing, Miss Meredith,” she said.

“Indeed, but he did,” answered Janice, merrily.  “Wouldst believe it, Lady Washington, though perhaps ’t is monstrous bold of me to tell it, ’t is he that has had to keep me at a distance, for I have courted him most outrageously!”

“’T is fortunate,” replied the matron, “that he is a loyal husband, and that I am not a jealous wife, for ’t is a way all women have with him.  What think you a Virginian female, who happened to be passing through camp, had the forwardness to say to me but t’ other day?  ‘When General Washington,’ she writ, ’throws off the hero and takes up the chatty, agreeable companion, he can be downright impudent sometimes, Martha,—­such impudence as you and I, and every woman, always like.’”

“Ah,” asserted Madame de Riedesel, “ze goot men, zay all lofe us dearly.  Eh, Janice?”

“What!” demanded the hostess.  “Is your name Janice?  Surely this is not my nice boy Jack’s Miss Meredith?”

The girl reddened and then paled.  “I beg, Lady Washington—­” she began; but the baroness, who had noted her change of colour, cut her off.

“You haf a lofer,” she cried, “and nevair one word to me told?  Ach, ingrate!  And your lofe I zought it was mine.

“Miss Meredith is very different, then, from a certain gentleman,” remarked Mrs. Washington, laughingly.  “I first gained his confidence when he lay wounded at headquarters winter before last; but once his secret was unbosomed, I could not so much as stop to ask how he did but he must begin and talk of nothing but her till he became so excited and feverish that I had to check or leave him for his own good.”

“Indeed, Lady Washington,” protested the girl, her lip trembling in her endeavour to keep back the tears, “once Colonel Brereton may have thought he cared for me, but, I assure you, ’t was but a half-hearted regard, which long since died.”

“’T is thy cruelty killed it, then,” asserted Mrs. Washington, “for, unless my eyes and ears deceived me, never was there more eager lover than—­”

“’T is not so; on the contrary, he won my heart and then broke it with his cruelty,” denied the girl, the tears coming in spite of herself.  “I pray you forgive my silly tears, and do not speak more of this matter,” she ended.

“I cannot believe it of him,” responded Lady Washington.  “But ’t was far from my thought to distress you, and it shall never be spoke of more.”

The subject was instantly dropped; and though Janice saw much of Lady Washington during their three weeks’ stay at the Springs, and a mutual liking sprang up between the two, never again was it broached save at the moment that they set out on their return to Colic, when her new friend, along with her farewell kiss, said, “I, too, shall soon leave the Springs, my dear, and journey ere long to join the general at headquarters for the winter.  Have you any message for him?”