Ethan had come down-stairs, intending to be more discreet than ever in the future. De Poincy was no doubt right--even here it was necessary to be _en garde_. With this idea dragged well into the foreground again, what demon of perversity made him lift a hand above the banisters and hold the girl's fingers fast to the polished rail? It was the first time he had touched her. He was rather startled at the commotion set up in his own nerves by the trifling action, but it was mainly, he assured himself, the reflex of the evident agitation of the girl. She had dropped her eyes, and he saw her upper lip tremble. "What's the real matter?" he repeated, letting go her hand, not all of a sudden, but drawing his own across it lingeringly; "I thought you were always happy." "Happy!" she said, making a gallant effort to recover her usual manner. "Well, it's nobody's fault if I am." "Now that I come to look at you, I believe you _are_ happy, all the same." "Course I am; but it's only because I was born that way and can't get out o' the habit." She came on down-stairs. "Your father was quite right, you know, in what he said this afternoon." "Oh, he didn't really mean it. It was partly just arguing--father does so love arguing--and partly because Emmie told on you. I've been saying she deserved to have a sore throat." "Told on me?" The supper-bell rang. "Yes," said Val, when she could make herself heard; "let out that you had a valet. Emmie's so indiscreet. It was all right to tell grandma, she _likes_ splendor, but Emmie might have known father would shy awfully at a valet. Sh! here he is!" Ethan went and sat by Emmie a little while after supper that evening. They were great friends, these two; but somehow Ethan's conversation flagged. For no discoverable reason he had fallen into the clutch of one of those fits of gloomy silence that before he came to the Fort had been growing in frequency and in power to cripple and to numb his spirit. He had just given Emmie an old silver pounce-box that had belonged to some dead and gone Tallmadge, and that Ethan for years had carried in his pocket. Emmie was to keep menthol in it, Ethan said, and to sniff the aromatic remedy through the open-work inner lid of gold. Emmie was delighted at this attention on the part of her cousin, but she glanced up now and then from her occupation of crumbling the menthol into the tiny receptacle, keenly conscious of Ethan's black-browed preoccupation. "Why do you think so much?" she said. "Heaven forfend! I never think." "Oh yes, you do--unless Val's here. Grandma has often said," she continued, with her little air of superiority, "no one can think when Val's in the room." "Ah," said Ethan to himself, "that's at the bottom of my affection for Val."