"She was looking very beautiful to-night," she said, "and she was supreme; all the men—and must I say it, all of us women, too—acknowledged her rule. But I do not wonder that she attracts the masculine mind—her beauty, her bearing, her mysterious past, constitute the threefold charm to which all of you men yield, Captain Prescott. I wish I knew her history."
"It could be to her credit only," said Prescott.
She glanced up at him again, and now the moonlight falling on his face enabled her to see it set and firm, and Mrs. Markham felt that there had been a change. He was not the same man who had come with her to the meeting of the club, but she was not a woman to relinquish easily a conquest or a half-conquest, and she called to her aid all the art of a strong and cultivated mind. She was bold and original in her methods, and did not leave the subject of Lucia Catherwood, but praised her, though now and then with slight reservations, letting fall the inference that she was her good friend and would be a better one if she could. Such use did she make of her gentle and unobtrusive sympathy that Prescott felt his heart warming once more to this handsome and accomplished woman.
"You will come to see me again?" she said at the door, letting a little hand linger a few moments in his.
"I fear that I may be sent at once to the front."
"But if you are not you will come?" she persisted.
"Yes," said Prescott, and bade her good-night.