CHAPTER XIV.

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.

SOON after my husband returned from Washington, he found that Ristori was advertised in St. Louis, and as he had been delighted with her acting when in the East, he insisted upon my going there, though it was a journey of several hundred miles. The young officers urged, and the pretty Diana looked volumes of entreaty at me, so at last I consented to go, as we need be absent but a few days. At that time the dreaded campaign looked far off, and I was trying to cheat myself into the belief that there might possibly be none at all.

Ristori, heard under any circumstances, was an event in a life; but to listen to her as we did, the only treat of the kind in our winter, and feeling almost certain it was the last of such privileges for years to come, was an occasion never to be forgotten.

I do not know whether Diana collected her senses enough to know, at any one time, that she was listening to the most gifted woman in histrionic art. A civilian lover had appeared on the scene, and between our young officers, already far advanced in the dazed and enraptured state, and the new addition to her retinue, she was never many moments without "airy nothings" poured into her ear. The citizen and the officers glowered on each other, and sought in vain to monopolize the inamorata. Even when the thoughtless girl put a military cap on the head of a civilian, and told him that an improvement in his appearance was instantly visible, he still remained, and held his ground valiantly. Finally the most desperate of them called me to one side, and implored my championship. He complained bitterly that he never began to say what trembled on his tongue but one of those interfering fellows appeared and interrupted him, and now, as the time was passing, there remained but one chance before he went home, where he would again be among a dozen other men who were sure to get in his way. He said he had thought over every plan, and if I would engage the interfering ones for a half hour, he would take Diana to the hotel cupola, ostensibly to see the view, and if, after they were up there, she saw anything but him, it would not be his fault; for say his say he must. No one could resist such a piteous appeal, so I engaged the supernumerary men in conversation as best I could, talking against time and eyeing the door as anxiously as they