"Please excuse my foolishness," returned Helen, bravely keeping back the tears, "but do you really mean to open the Fort then?"
"Yes, and joking aside, we intend to celebrate it with all éclat possible, and we want you to do what you can to assist us."
"You may rest assured of that, Sir George," she replied, "however little that may be."
"And I take this opportunity," he continued, swinging off his helmet with a graceful bow, "to invite the first Lady of the land to be my partner at the opening quadrille?"
Helen had conquered her emotion and, although amazed, was equal to the occasion. With a sweeping courtesy, she replied:
"Your request is granted, sire." Although what in the world he could mean by such an invitation she could scarcely imagine.
Captain Cummings gave the Colonel a sharp glance and bit his lip. Helen noticed it and so did the senior officer.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Two afternoons later Helen went with the women Bond and Hardman to gather blackberries, which were ripening in rich profusion upon bushes scattered along the southern border of a copse of hemlock. The women had been gathering the fruit for days, and on this occasion Helen had arranged to go with them. For a while all laughed and chatted and picked the berries side by side; but as the good patches became more scattered, they drifted apart, each working on in silence.
Helen's pail was almost full, and she was on the point of hailing her companions to return to the garrison, when the report of a gun in the adjacent woods startled her. There was a tramping, a rustling, a dividing of the bushes, and the huntsman appeared.