To Ailsa Paige June and July passed like fevered dreams; the brief sweet spring had suddenly turned into summer in a single day--a strange, stifling, menacing summer full of heavy little thunder-storms which rolled crackling and banging up the Hudson amid vivid electric displays, leaving no coolness behind their trailing wake of rain. Society was lingering late in town--if the few nebulous, unorganised, and scattered social groups could be called society--small coteries drawn temporarily together through accident of environment, inherited family acquaintance, traditional, material, or religious interest, and sometimes by haphazard intellectual compatibility. In the city, and in Ailsa's little world, the simple social routine centring in Sainte Ursula's and the Assembly in winter, and in Long Branch and Saratoga in summer, had been utterly disorganised. Very few of her friends had yet left for the country; nor had she made any arrangements for this strange, unreal summer, partly because, driven to find relief from memory in occupation, she was devoting herself very seriously to the medical instruction under Dr. Benton; partly because she did not consider it a fitting time to seek the coolness and luxury of inland spa or seaside pier. Colonel Arran had brought back with him from Washington a Captain Hallam, a handsome youngster who wore his cavalry uniform to perfection and who had become instantly attentive to Ailsa,--so attentive that before she realised it he was a regular visitor at her house, appropriating the same chair that Berkley always had--Berkley!---- At the memory she closed her eyes instinctively. The wound throbbed, "What is the matter, Mrs. Paige?" inquired Captain Hallam anxiously. "Are you faint?" She opened her eyes and smiled in pretence of surprise at such a question; and Hallam muttered: "I thought you seemed rather pale all of a sudden." Then he brightened up and went gaily on with what he had been saying: "We've got nine full companies already, and the 10th, K, is an independent company which we're taking in to complete our organisation. Colonel Arran and I stopped in Philadelphia to inspect Colonel Rush's regiment of lancers--the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry--because the French officers on McClellan's staff have put it into his head that he needs lancers----" "Is Colonel Arran's regiment to carry lances?" interrupted Ailsa in surprise. Hallam nodded, laughing: "We recruited as light cavalry, armed with sabre and pistol, but General McClellan has ordered that we carry the lance in addition. The department had none to issue until the foreign samples arrived. We are ordered to carry a lance of the Austrian pattern, nine feet long with an eleven-inch, three-edged blade; the staff of Norway fir about an inch and a quarter through, with ferrule and counter poise at the heel. Do I make myself clear, Mrs. Paige?" Ailsa, thinking of Berkley, flushed slightly and nodded.