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“I have heard something about you which is very painful,” she said one day as they sat together beside the chalybeate spring. The crag, all discolored in rust-red streaks by the dripping of the mineral water through its interstices, towered above their heads; the ferns, exquisite and of subtle fragrance, tufted the niches; the trees were close about them, and below, on the precipitous slope; sometimes the lush green boughs parted, revealing a distant landscape of azure ranges, far stretching against a sky as blue, and in the valley of the foreground long bars of golden hue, where fields, denuded of the harvested wheat, took the sun. Girard lounged, languid, taciturn, and quiescent as ever, on the opposite side of the circular rock basin wherein the clear water fell.

“I will tell you what it is,” Alicia went on, after a pause, for, though he looked attentive, he gave not even a glance of question. “I hear that you gamble.”

His gaze concentrated as he knitted his brows, but he said nothing.

She pulled her broad straw hat forward on her auburn hair and readjusted the flounces of her white morning dress, saying while thus engaged, “Yes, indeed; that you gamble–like–like fury!”

“Why, don’t you know that’s against the law?” he demanded unexpectedly.

“I know that it is very wrong and sinful,” she said solemnly.

“Thanky. I’ll put that in my pipe an’ smoke it! I’m very wrong and sinful, I am given to understand.”

“Why, I didn’t mean you so much,” she faltered, perturbed by this sudden charge of the enemy. “I meant the practice.”

“Oh, I know that I’m a sinner in more ways ‘n one; but I didn’t know that you were a lady-preacher.”

“You mean that it is none of my business—-“

“You ought to be so glad of that,” he retorted.

She maintained a silence that might have suggested a degree of offended pride, and she was truly humiliated that her vaunted hazel eyes had so signally failed to work their wonted charm. As they strolled back together up the steep path to the hotel he seemed either unobservant or uncaring, so impassive were his manners, and she was aware that her demonstration had resulted in giving him information which he could not otherwise have gained. Later, she was nettled to notice that he had utilized it in prosaic fashion, for that night no lights flared late from the casino.

The gamesters, informed that rumors were a-wing, had betaken themselves elsewhere. A small smoking-room in the hotel proper seemed less obnoxious to suspicion in the depleted condition of the guest-list, since autumn was now approaching. After eleven o’clock the coterie would scarcely be subject to interruption, and there they gathered as the hour waxed late. The cards were duly dealt, the draw was on, when suddenly the door opened and old Mr. Whitmel, his favorite meerschaum in his hand and a sheaf of newly arrived journals, entered with the evident intention of a prolonged stay. A “standpatter” seemed hardly so assured as before he encountered the dim, surprised gaze, but the old clergyman was esteemed a good sort, and he ventured on a reminder:

“You have been here before, haven’t you, Mr. Whitmel? Saw a deal of this sort of thing in the army!” And he rattled the chips significantly.

“Used to see that sort of thing in the army? Yes, yes, indeed–more than I wanted to see–very much more!”

Colonel Duval took schooling much amiss. He turned up his florid face with its auburn mustachios and Burnside whiskers from its bending over the cards and showed a broad arch of glittering white teeth in an ungenial laugh.

“Remember, Mr. Whitmel, at that fight we had in the hills not far from the Ocoee, how you rebuked two artillerymen for swearing? Something was wrong with the vent-hole of the piece, and one of the gunners asked what business you had with their language; and you said, ‘I am a minister of the Lord,’ and the fellow gave it back very patly, ‘I ain’t carin’ ef you was a minister of state!’ Then you said, ‘No, you would doubtless swear in the presence of an angel.’ And the fellow with the sponge-staff declared, ‘Say, Mister, ef you are that, you are an angel off your feed certain’–you were worn to skin and bone then–‘an’ the rations of manna must be ez skimpy in heaven ez the rations o’ bacon down here in Dixie.’ Ha, ha, ha!”