THE FACE AT THE WINDOW At the governor's table that night certain ladies and gentlemen assembled to do the envoy honour.

There came, too, a young gentleman, son of a distinguished New Englander, his name George Gering, who was now in New York for the first time.

The truth is, his visit was to Jessica, his old playmate, the mistress of his boyhood.

Her father was in England, her mother had been dead many years, and Colonel Nicholls and his sister being kinsfolk, a whole twelvemonth ago she had been left with them.

Her father had thought at first to house her with his old friend Edward Gering, but he loved the Cavalier-like tone of Colonel Nicholls's household better than the less inspiriting air which Madam Puritan Gering suffused about her home.