uplifted to his. Mrs. Fortescue would never see forty again, and her
rich hair had a wide streak of silver running from her right temple;
but she was the same Betty Beverley of twenty years before. The Betty
Beverleys of this world are dowered with immortal youth and change but
little, even under strange stars.

Mrs. Fortescue had never in her life been at the end of her resources
for placating men. She withdrew her arms from about her husband's
neck, and running lightly into the drawing-room took the After-Clap
from Kettle's arms, and, throwing him pick-a-back on her shoulders,
tripped with her beautiful man-child into the Colonel's office. Mrs.
Fortescue and the baby were the only persons who ever took liberties
with Colonel Fortescue.

The baby, charmed with his father's uniform, seized a shoulder strap
with one hand and grabbed the Colonel's carefully trimmed mustache with
the other, and lifted a pair of laughing eyes, wonderfully like his
mother's, into his father's face. Mrs. Fortescue, at first as demure
as any C. O.'s wife in the world, suddenly smiled the radiant smile
that began with her eyes and ended with her lips. The woman's cunning
was too much for the man's strength. Colonel Fortescue put his arm
around his wife, as she laid the baby's rose-leaf face against his
father's bronzed cheek. Husband and wife looked into each other's eyes
and smiled. With this baby their lost youth was restored to them.
Once more the Colonel was a slim young lieutenant, and Mrs. Fortescue
was holding in her arms another dark-eyed, rose-leafed baby, now a
young soldier in the gray uniform of a military cadet. They,
themselves, could scarcely realize the flitting of the years. This new
baby was a glorious surprise in their later married life. The baby's
little hand had led them backward to the splendid sunrise of their