Mrs. Ironwood's "sleepy" eyes saw all these things; saw also, by degrees, some others. She could tell, to a time, how often Cadet-Captain Trueman had walked with Violet, as also that Violet seemed quite unconscious that he came oftener than other men.
"Great pity!" said Mrs. Ironwood in her heart, waving her fan there on the hotel piazza. "He's the best fellow living—and she's the girl of girls for him. But she hasn't a sou—and he hasn't; it would never do. I did try to keep Rose in the way—but my! he'd get round a standing army. Study, drills, examination, don't head him off one bit. A fine piece of three weeks' work! And in ten days more he graduates, and there's an end."
And just at that very time, this is what was going on among the casemates at Fort Putnam.
"Do you think you could live on a second lieutenant's pay?" Trueman was saying. "It is not much, you know—but then at first we should probably be stationed at some small one-company post, where it would not be needful to make a show."
"I have never lived where it was needful, or possible, to make a show," said Violet, with a bit of a laugh at the idea of being "stationed" anywhere. "But you know I have had no chance to think of anything yet."
"Yes, of course," said Trueman; "it's all very sudden to you. But the first minute I saw you I knew I had met my fate, and I have done nothing but think, ever since. Thinking out the fairest story that ever came into any man's heart. And I am going so soon. Write home to-night, will you, Miss Violet, and get leave to promise?"
And then with the sound of coming footsteps, the two drew apart a little, and walked decorously down the hill; Trueman screening himself carefully with Violet's blue parasol from the sun without, and she conscious only of a strange new sunlight within.
Rose, meanwhile, was having a different sort of talk with Mr. Bouché; an American, despite his French name.
He was a handsome fellow, stood well up in his class, and was proficient in more than West Point learning; but as much adrift as any unpiloted boat in all matters of faith, and some of practice. Why he sought out Rose Kindred (as he had done persistently from the day she came) it would be hard to tell, unless from that peculiar masculine contrariness which, as Mrs. Ironwood phrased it, "makes Arctic men always swear by the South Pole."
It was Mr. Bouché's special delight to get Rose away from everyone else, find her a splendid seat in some leafy nook, throw himself down on the grass where he must needs look up and so could properly gaze into her face, and then draw her into an argument. I do not know that Rose was more wedded to her opinions than other women, but she knew what she believed, which they do not all. And when the point was of importance she could fight, and fight well; zeal and love of the truth holding their own fearlessly against more polished weapons. Even as did the old "Queen's Arm" in the hand of one of her ancestors at Concord.