"The 42nd British Foot."

"You have not yet been in action in America?"

"No, but I have just crossed the Jerseys with despatches."

She shook her head, her cheeks glowing.

"My home was there when the war began," she explained simply. "Now it is
hate, pillage, and plunder everywhere. We fled to Philadelphia for our
lives, and have almost forgotten we ever had a home. We loyalists are
paying a price almost equal to those men with Washington. 'Tis this
memory which makes me so bitter toward those who play amid the ruins."

"Yet you have seemed to enter into the gay spirit of the occasion," and
my eyes swept over her costume.

"Oh, I am girl enough to enjoy the glitter, even while the woman in me
condemns it all. You are a soldier--a fighting soldier, I hope--and still
you are here also seeking pleasure."

"True; I yielded to temptation, but for which I should never have come."

"What?"

"The dare in your eyes this afternoon," I said boldly. "But for what I
read there I should be out yonder riding through the night."

She laughed, yet not wholly at ease, the long lashes drooping over her
eyes.