Greenleaf's steed Hilary's had paused an instant and turned his head,
but now followed on again, while the laughter ended in the clapping of a
hundred hands; for Kincaid's horse had the bridle free on his neck and
was following his master as a dog follows. Irby scowled, the General set
his jaws, and Hilary took his horse's bridle and led him on.

"That's what _I_ want to do every time I look at him!" called Charlie to
his sister.

"Then look the other way!" carolled back the slender beauty. To whom
Anna smiled across in her belated way, and wondered if the impulse to
follow Hilary Kincaid ever came to women.

But now out yonder the two cousins were in the saddle, Irby's sabre was
out, and soon the manoeuvres were fully under way. Flora, at the
General's side, missed nothing of them, yet her nimble eye kept her well
aware that across here in this open seclusion the desperate Greenleaf's
words to Anna were rarely explanatory of the drill.

"And now," proclaimed Mandeville, "you'll see them form into line fazed
to the rear!" And Flora, seeing and applauding, saw also Anna turn to
her suitor a glance, half pity for him, half pleading for his pity.

"I say unless--" Greenleaf persisted--

"There is no 'unless.' There can't ever be any."

"But may I not at least say--?"

"I'd so much rather you would not," she begged.