just called hers. She noted his mouth, how gently firm: "A man's mouth!"

Charlie Valcour broke in between them: "Is there not going to be any
drill, after all?"

"Tell Captain Irby you can't wait any longer," replied Kincaid with a
mock frown and gave Anna yet gayer attention a minute more. Then he
walked beside his cousin toward the command, his horse close at his
back. The group, by pairs, chose view points. Only Miss Valcour stayed
in the carriage with the General, bent on effecting a change in his
mind. In Mobile Flora had been easily first in any social set to which
she condescended. In New Orleans, brought into the Callenders' circles by
her cousin Mandeville, she had found herself quietly ranked second to
Anna, and Anna now yet more pointedly outshining her through the brazen
splendor of this patriotic gift of guns. For this reason and others yet
to appear she had planned a strategy and begun a campaign, one of whose
earliest manoeuvres must be to get Irby, not Kincaid, made their uncle's
adjutant-general, and therefore to persuade the uncle that to give
Kincaid the battery would endear him to Anna and so crown with victory
the old man's perfectly obvious plan.

Greenleaf left his horse tied and walked apart with Anna. This, he
murmured, was the last time they would be together for years.

"Yes," she replied with a disheartening composure, although from under
the parasol with which he shaded her she met his eyes so kindly that his
heart beat quicker. But before he could speak on she looked away to his
fretting horse and then across to the battery, where a growing laugh was
running through the whole undisciplined command. "What is it about?" she
playfully inquired, but then saw. In response to the neigh of