had proceeded thence to England on other professional business.

Dick Claiborne had been ill, and was abroad on leave in an effort to
shake off the lingering effects of typhoid fever contracted in the
Philippines. He was under orders to report for duty at Fort Myer on the
first of April, and it was now late March. He and his sister had spent
the morning at their brother's school and were enjoying a late _déjeûner_
at the Monte Rosa. There existed between them a pleasant comradeship that
was in no wise affected by divergent tastes and temperaments. Dick had
just attained his captaincy, and was the youngest man of his rank in the
service. He did not know an orchid from a hollyhock, but no man in the
army was a better judge of a cavalry horse, and if a Wagner recital bored
him to death his spirit rose, nevertheless, to the bugle, and he drilled
his troop until he could play with it and snap it about him like a whip.

Shirley Claiborne had been out of college a year, and afforded a pleasant
refutation of the dull theory that advanced education destroys a girl's
charm, or buoyancy, or whatever it is that is so greatly admired in young
womanhood. She gave forth the impression of vitality and strength. She
was beautifully fair, with a high color that accentuated her
youthfulness. Her brown hair, caught up from her brow in the fashion of
the early years of the century, flashed gold in sunlight.

Much of Shirley's girlhood had been spent in the Virginia hills, where
Judge Claiborne had long maintained a refuge from the heat of Washington.
From childhood she had read the calendar of spring as it is written upon
the landscape itself. Her fingers found by instinct the first arbutus;
she knew where white violets shone first upon the rough breast of the
hillsides; and particular patches of rhododendron had for her the
intimate interest of private gardens.