might have suspected something, as I continued in the same strain; but such is not the way of youth. Her arts might have been transparent to me for months and months, yet she would at last break the great secret with most delicious gentleness, in stammers and blushes, and I would show a dramatic surprise and shock. We see other people’s progress, but our own love affairs are always unguessed.

It was a great relief to Carrie when we arrived at the Bassishaws’. The strain was getting embarrassing. A straight military young figure had evidently been on the look-out for our conveyance, for he made several false starts, and almost supplanted the more ceremonious reception due from his mother. This little formality through, he pounced on us at once.

“How d’ye do, Miss Butterfield? Do, Butterfield?” he said warmly. “So glad you’ve come.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “I was rather afraid I’d have to let Carrie come alone, but I managed to arrange it.”

A shade of regret was visible in his eyes, but he bore it nicely. He is “white,” as Carmichael would have said.

“Of course,” he said, “Miss Butterfield would have been all right, you know, but I’m glad you came too.”

I believe he was. Saying so seemed to make him so.

We walked up the garden, I in the middle. Carrie received an occasional bow, but we didn’t know many people there. This was young Bassishaw’s excuse for conducting us personally, and he pointed out various people as “men you ought to know, you know, Butterfield.” I betrayed no great desire for the acquaintanceship. I was not to be shaken off.

Bassishaw was piloting us into the most frequented parts. This young man was manœuvring, with more skill than I had given him credit for, to drop me. Carrie had my arm, and as Bassishaw stopped at the various groups I made surer of it by a little closing in of my elbow. He had the advantage of a tactician’s knowledge, but I had the larger experience. He led us towards the base of operations, the refreshment tent, where he calculated to play on the natural interest I should take in the commissariat department. He gave me a hint of a private canteen—it was good strategy, I was very thirsty—but I held out. He showed a great desire to introduce me to personages, but I replied to his big guns with a harassing fire of conversational small-arms. He really did very well, and my respect for him increased. Personal strategy was his line, but I held 

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