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affectation, as I thought, of secrecy, a miniature of this Apollo.
    The painted face was handsome enough, though to me the eyes did not have a very pleasant expression. He was clothed (the miniature was a bust portrait) in an exceedingly ornate uniform, with a number of orders among the gold lace and cords which rivaled the bright yellow of his hair. I managed to voice a few generalities in answer to the Grafin's demands for my opinion, but to me he was lacking in appeal.
    I was still reluctantly holding this miniature, which she had pushed into my hand, when Colonel Fenwick came with the message our traveling coach was ready. Glad of an excuse, I offered the painting back to my companion and then saw the Colonel glance at it. His face was without expression for a moment. Then he directed at me a look which made me feel, in an odd and disturbed way, as if I had been judged and found wanting. Perhaps he believed that I was encouraging the Gräfin in her infatuation. Certainly he had madeno attempt to know me better during the voyage, keeping to himself, while the Grafin had been ever at my elbow. To him I could be just another empty-minded female—just a responsibility he would be glad to be rid of as soon as we arrived.
    Now I found myself resenting that impression. I would have liked very much to have made plain to him that this visit to Hesse-Dohna meant only one thing to me and I wanted nothing from it except the word of a reputedly dying man—that my grandmother be given at last the honorable position in the sight of the world she had always deserved.
    As he turned away abruptly the Grafin pursed her lips in a pout.
    “He presumes too much,” she said. “Because his father took service with the Elector, knew him years ago in America, and His Highness is his godfather, he believes himself to be a person of consequence. What is he truly but a hireling, a mercenary! You—” She paused a moment and then continued, “Your countrymen would have none of his family once—they considered them traitors, drove them out after your revolution. So some of them sold their swords overseas. He shall find what is thought of his kind—soon!”
    That the Colonel was of Tory descent I had had hinted to me before I left Maryland—when I had had a private interview with Mr. Weston who gave me, at my request, a sum in gold I carried in secret, being prudent enough to want funds if I should need them. But Tories no Jonger were the ogres of one's childhood. Thus I had thought no more of him than that he was an exile who had at last found a place for himself.
    Only the present spiteful note in the Gräfin's voice might have been uttered by one of my own countrywomen a generation ago. It was hard, ugly, out of character—making her for an instant something else than she had continually presented herself to be.
    Our progress across land was hardly more comfortable than the voyage and far more constricted. The Grafin and I, with Katrine seated with her back to thehorses, were immured for hours in a great lumbering coach which dipped, rattled, swayed from pothole to pothole on ill-kept roads. The Colonel and the Graf had the better of it, for they rode horseback and kept ahead, with the uniformed escort, of our rocking prison. Another detachment of guards behind added to the small train of carriages and wagons, some transporting luggage, others servants which had been waiting for us.
    It was the duty of some of these to forge well ahead each morning, take over an inn, getting rid of lesser travelers thinking to shelter therein, prepare the beds with our own linen, cook our meals, have all ready for our arrival. That we used only inns surprised me, for the custom of my own country was to visit the nearest manor or plantation along one's route, strangers being welcomed with openhanded hospitality. But, I decided, European customs were perhaps different.
    At last, having survived the queasiness brought on by the imprisonment in the coach, the