"Yes, my loss was his gain, but still the influence of what I did in the past throws its blighting consequence over her life; but let us not speak of it, Lulu. There are themes more pleasant to me--ah, if I mistake not," glancing out of a near window, "there's the captain's faultless equipage outside--do you drive with him this evening?" "I believe I did promise him," she says, reluctantly, and the next moment the fine-looking captain is ushered in, and Bruce goes back to his former seat. Coolly polite are the greetings between the two gentlemen. The words that pass between them are of the briefest, while Lulu goes for her wrappings. He smiles, as standing at the window he meets her regretful smile, and knows how much rather she had been with him than dashing off in that handsome phaeton. She carries that smile in her heart as they whirl down the avenue, past the White House, and off by a pretty circuitous route for the little city of Georgetown. There is a glow on her cheek, a sweet, serious light in her eyes, a slight abstraction in her manner, that charms her companion. He bends near her, a sparkle in his blue eyes, a gratified smile on his lips, for he fancies that he has called that added charm to her face. She has taken his heart by storm, and before she can realize it, he has capitulated and laid the spoils of war at her feet--namely, the battered old heart of a forty-year-old captain in the U. S. A., a brown-stone front on Capitol Hill, and fifty thousand dollars. She looks up in utter amaze at the fair blonde face of the really handsome veteran, with its rippling beard and sunny expression of good-humor, then her eyes fall, and she softly laughs at his folly in the charmingly incredulous way with which some women refuse an offer. "My dear sir, you do me too much honor, and I would not for the world exchange my maiden freedom for 'a name and a ring.'" The captain is not so very much disheartened. He is of a sanguine temperament, and says he will not despair yet--in short, means to try again at some fitting future period; and she, leaning back, listless, half sorry for him, and a little flattered at his preference, wishes with all her heart that this were Bruce Conway instead. "Ah! by the way," he breaks in presently, "there is a rumor--I beg your pardon if I offend--but is it true, as society declares, that you are to marry Conway?" Her heart gives a great muffled throb, that almost stifles her, then the small head lifts erect and calm. "It is not a fact--at least, I am not aware of it--unless, indeed, society means to marry us willy-nilly." "Society has made worse matches," he lightly rejoins. "Conway is a prize in the market matrimonial--Miss Clendenon certainly has no peer!"