They were Dave Darrin and a pretty girl.

On the margin of the card had been scrawled in bold letters: "Your affair of the heart will bear close watching if you still cherish!" This was signed, contemptibly and untruthfully, "A Friend." "Uh!" murmured Belle in hurt pride and loyalty.

Then she said resolutely to herself: "I will pay no attention to this.

An anonymous communication is always meant to hurt and to give a false impression." But there was the picture before her eyes of Dave and the pretty girl in seemingly great intimacy.

So though she continued to write to the midshipman and tried hard to make her letters sound as usual, in spite of herself a coldness crept into them that Dave felt.
"She must have seen that pictorial weekly," thought the boy miserably.
But as Belle said nothing of this, he could not write of it.
The season was well along.