"Then I vow our General has felt the smite of your fair daughter's charms," remarked Mr. Anderson. Marjorie breathed a sigh of relief at the timely interruption. "Do you really think so?" asked Mrs. Shippen, with no attempt to conceal her impatience. "Unquestionably. 'Smiles from reason flow, To brute denied, and are of love the food.' So sang the bard, and so sing I of His Excellency." "But his age! He cannot now be thinking of matrimony." "Age, my dear Mrs. Shippen, is a matter of feeling, not of years. The greatest miracle of love is to eradicate all disparity. Before it age, rank, lineage, distinction dissolve like the slowly fading light of the sun at eventide. The General is bent on conquest; that I'll wager. What say you, Major? A five pound note?" "Not I. 'Old men are twice children,' you know." "Well, if I do say it," remarked Mrs. Shippen, "my daughter has had a splendid education and is as cultured a girl as there is in the city and would make a fitting helpmate for any man, no matter what his position in life may be." The orchestra began to fill the room with the strains of the minuet. Mr. Anderson arose and advanced towards Marjorie. "May I have the pleasure of your company?" he said. Marjorie arose and gave him her arm. II She tripped through the graces of the minuet in a mechanical sort of a fashion, her thoughts in a far off land of amazement and gloomy desolation. The unexpected and adverse stroke of fortune which had descended with hawk-like velocity upon Stephen had thoroughly disconcerted her. Try as she would, her imagination could not be brought under her control. There was one image that would not out, and that was Stephen's. A short note from him gave the first inkling to her. He had been placed under arrest by order of Major-General Arnold on the charge of striking his superior officer, in violation of the Fifth Article, Second Section of the American Articles of War. The charge had been preferred on the evening previous to his arrest and bore the signature of Colonel Forrest, with whom, she called to mind, he had participated in the affray at the Inn. Little would come of it. Of that she could rest assured. For if he chose to present his side of the case, cause might be found against the Colonel in the matter of disrespectful language against the Commander-in-chief. On that account the affair would very probably end where it had begun and his sword would once more be restored to him. Should the Colonel press the case, however, it would result in a court-martial, that being the usual tribunal before which such matters were tried.