For a week or more Beverly had been behaving toward Baldos in the most

cavalier fashion. Her friends had been teasing her; and, to her own

intense amazement, she resented it. The fact that she felt the sting of

their sly taunts was sufficient to arouse in her the distressing

conviction that he had become important enough to prove

embarrassing. While confessing to herself that it was a bit treacherous

and weak, she proceeded to ignore Baldos with astonishing

persistency. Apart from the teasing, it seemed to her of late that he

was growing a shade too confident.

He occasionally forgot his differential air, and relaxed into a very

pleasing but highly reprehensible state of friendliness. A touch of the

old jauntiness cropped out here and there, a tinge of the old irony

marred his otherwise perfect mien as a soldier. His laugh was freer, his

eyes less under subjugation, his entire personality more arrogant. It

was time, thought she resentfully, that his temerity should meet some

sort of check.

And, moreover, she had dreamed of him two nights in succession.

How well her plan succeeded may best be illustrated by saying that she

now was in a most uncomfortable frame of mind. Baldos refused to be

properly depressed by his misfortune. He retired to the oblivion she

provided and seemed disagreeably content. Apparently, it made very

little difference to him whether he was in or out of favor. Beverly was

in high dudgeon and low spirits.

The party rode forth at an early hour in the morning. It was hot in the

city, but it looked cold and bleak on the heights. Comfortable wraps

were taken along, and provision was made for luncheon at an inn half way

up the slope. Quinnox regaled Beverly with stories in which Grenfall

Lorry was the hero and Yetive the heroine. He told her of the days when

Lorry, a fugitive with a price upon his head, charged with the

assassination of Prince Lorenz, then betrothed to the princess, lay

hidden in the monastery while Yetive's own soldiers hunted high and low

for him. The narrator dwelt glowingly upon the trip from the monastery

to the city walls one dark night when Lorry came down to surrender

himself in order to shield the woman he loved, and Quinnox himself

piloted him through the underground passage into the very heart of the

castle. Then came the exciting scene in which Lorry presented himself as

a prisoner, with the denouement that saved the princess and won for the

gallant American the desire of his heart.

"What a brave fellow he was!" cried Beverly, who never tired of hearing

the romantic story.

"Ah, he was wonderful, Miss Calhoun. I fought him to keep him from

surrendering. He beat me, and I was virtually his prisoner when we

appeared before the tribunal."




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