For an instant Gertrude’s eyes grew narrow as she glanced from one to the other; then she recovered her usual sweet manner, as she turned to Judithe:
“Pardon me, I fancied you two had met. Madame Caron, permit me to present Captain Monroe, one of our recent acquisitions.”
Both bowed; neither spoke. Colonel McVeigh entered at that moment. He had changed the grey travelling suit in which he arrived, for the grey uniform of his regiment, and Judithe, however critical she tried to be, could not but acknowledge that he was magnificent; mentally she added, “Magnificent animal; but what of the soul, the soul?”
There was no lack of soul in his eyes as he looked at her and crossed the room, as though drawn by an invisible chain, and noted, as a lover ever notes, that the dress she wore had in its soft, silvery folds, a suggestion of sentiment for the cause he championed.
But when he murmured something of his appreciation, she dropped her eyes to the fan she held, and when she glanced slowly up it was in a manner outlawing the tete-a-tete.
“I realize now, Colonel McVeigh, that you are really a part of the army,” she remarked in the tone of one who makes the conversation general. “You were a very civilian-looking person this morning. I have, like your Southern ladies, acquired a taste for warlike trappings; the uniform is very handsome.”
“Thanks; I hope you will find my next one more becoming, since it is to be that of Brigadier-General.”
Although Matthew Loring’s sight was impaired, his locomotion slow, and his left hand and arm yet helpless, his sense of hearing was acute enough to hear the words even across Monroe’s conversation, for his sunken eyes lit up as he twisted his head towards the speaker:
“What’s that, Kenneth? You to command a brigade?”