"Why should you starve yourself as well as me?" he asked, softly, when she declined the dishes brought to her, and made pretense of drinking the cup of tea he offered. "You--starving?" and the slight arching of the dark brows added to the note of question. "Yes, for a word of hope." "Really? and what word do you covet?" "The one telling me if the Countess Biron's gossip was the only reason you sent me away." Mrs. McVeigh looked over at the two, well satisfied that Kenneth was giving attention to her most distinguished guest. Gertrude Loring looked across to the couple on the rustic seat and felt, without hearing, what the tenor of the conversation was. Kenneth McVeigh was wooing a woman who looked at him with slumbrous magnetic eyes and laughed at him. Gertrude envied her the wooing, but hated her for the laughter. All her life Kenneth McVeigh had been her ideal, but to this finished coquette of France he was only the man of the moment, who contributed to her love of power, her amusement. For the girl, who was his friend, read clearly the critical, half contemptuous gleams, alternating at times the graciousness of Madame Caron's dark eyes. She glanced at Monroe, and guessed that he was no more pleased than herself at the tete-a-tete there, and that he was quite as watchful. And the cause of it all met Colonel McVeigh's question with a glance, half alluring, half forbidding, as she sipped the tea and put aside the cup. "How persistent you are," she murmured. "If you adopt the same methods in warfare I do not wonder at your rapid promotions. But I shan't encourage it a moment longer; you have other guests, and I have a letter to write." She crossed to Mrs. McVeigh, murmured a few words of excuse, exchanged a smile with Evilena, who declared her a deserter from their ranks, and then moved up the steps to the veranda and passed through the open window into the library, pausing for a little backward glance ere she entered; and the people on the lawn who raised their glasses to her, did not guess that she looked over their heads, scanning the road for the expected messenger. Looking at the clock she seated herself, picked up the pen, and then halted, holding her hand out and noting the trembling of it. "Oh, you fool! You _woman_!" she said, through her closed teeth. She commenced one letter, blotted it in her nervous impatience, turned it aside and commenced another, when Captain Monroe appeared at the window with a glass of wine in his hand. "Why this desertion from the ranks?" he asked, jestingly, yet with purpose back of the jest. She recognized, but ignored it. "That you might be detailed for special duty, perhaps, Captain Jack," she replied, without looking around. "I have to look up stragglers," and he crossed to the desk where she sat. "I even brought you a forgotten portion of your lunch." She looked up at that, saw the glass, and shook her head; "No, no wine for me."