The music of the orchestra came, to them from the ball-room, and the rhythmic beat of dancing feet; the wind lifted her hair gently and brought to them the fragrance of flowering plants and the pungent aroma of mint down in the depths of the ravine hard by, where lurked a chalybeate spring; but for the noisy rout of the dance, and now and again the flimsy chatter of a passing couple on the piazza, promenading like themselves, they might have heard the waters of the fountain rise and bubble and break and sigh as the pulsating impulse beat like heart-throbs, and perchance on its rocky marge an oread a-singing. “But you don't answer me,” she pouted with an affectation of pettishness. “Do you know that you trouble yourself to talk very little, Captain Girard!” “I think the more,” he declared. “Think? Oh, dear me! I didn't know that anybody does anything so unfashionable nowadays as to _think!_ And what do you think about, pray?” “About you!” And that began it: he was a gallant man, and he had been a brave one. He was not aware how far he was going on so short an acquaintance, but his temerity was not displeasing to the lady. She liked his manner of storming the citadel, and she did not realize that he merely spoke at random, as best he might. He was in his uniform a splendid and martial presentment of military youth, and indeed he was much the junior of his compeers. “Who are Captain Girard's people, Papa?” she asked Colonel Duval next morning, as the family party sat at breakfast in quasi seclusion at one of the small round tables in the crowded dining-room, full of the chatter of people and the clatter of dishes. “Girard?” Colonel Duval repeated thoughtfully. “I really don't know. I have an impression they live somewhere in East Tennessee. I never met him till just about the end of the war.” “Oh, Papa! How unsatisfactory you are! You never know anything about anybody.” “I should think his people must be very plain,” said Mrs. Duval. Her social discrimination was extremely acute and in constant practice. “I don't know why. He is very much of a gentleman,” the Colonel contended. His heart was warm to-day with much fraternizing, and it was not kind to brush the bloom off his peach. “Oh, trifles suggest the fact. He is not at all _au fait_.”