Her chatter was stopped by a sudden exclamation from Jack, and following his gaze into the court below she saw two of the group in which she had been so interested earlier in the evening.
"That's the lieutenant I told you about!" she exclaimed excitedly. "That's Bogey, and the other is the major's daughter. I don't wonder that you're stunned at the sight of a pretty girl like that when it's been such ages since you have seen one."
"I'm stunned because it happens to be a girl I know," exclaimed Jack in a tone almost as excited as her own. "That's Gay Melville, and I met her at The Locusts the night I stopped in Lloydsboro Valley with the Shermans."
"Are you sure?" gasped Mary.
"Dead sure! She played the violin that evening, and you can't take your eyes off her face when she plays, it's so sweet, and you could never forget it after you'd watched her through one performance. Then her hair—there's no mistaking that, and that little trick of lifting her chin. Besides, it's no surprising matter to see her. She lives here and she's a popular girl."
"Oh, I know it!" exclaimed Mary, "and I've known all the time that her home is in San Antonio. Haven't I heard the Warwick Hall seniors talk of her by the hour? But somehow I never put two and two together and got it through my head that we're in the same town. Really I'd forgotten her in the excitement of our sudden coming. But now it just takes me off my feet to know that we're under the same roof, and to remember that she lived a whole summer in Lloydsboro Valley and is such a dear friend of the Little Colonel and Betty. Why, we're bound to meet her some time this winter. Oh, I know we're going to have a good time here, and I think that San Antonio is just the dearest, most charming old place in the world."
"It is certainly a good place to be to-night," answered Jack, following with intent gaze the vanishing figure of the major's pretty daughter. "And to-morrow—"
He did not finish the sentence, for the violins were throbbing through that last refrain of La Golondrina so softly and sweetly that he did not want to lose a note. When it was done Mary took up his last word, quoting with a dramatic sweep of the hand, "To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day!"