ubiquitous. His majesty is fastidious, you see, and seeks only the
caress of beauty, and while he lives there at the Suttons' when he goes
to town, and dines and sleeps and smokes and wines there, and uses their
box at the opera-house, and is courted and flattered by the old lady
because dear Cubby worships the ground he walks on and poor Fanny Sutton
thinks him adorable, he turns his back on the girl at every dance
because she _can't_ dance, and leaves her to you fellows who have a
conscience and some idea of decency. He gives all _his_ devotions to
Nina Beaubien, who dances like a _coryphee_, and drops _her_ when Alice
Renwick comes with her glowing Spanish beauty. Oh, damn it, I'm an old
fool to get worked up over it as I do, but you young fellows don't see
what I see. You haven't seen what I've seen; and pray God you never may!
That's where the shoe pinches, Rollins. It is what he _reminds_ me
of--not so much what he _is_, I suppose--that I get rabid about. He is
for all the world like a man we had in the old regiment when you were in
swaddling-clothes; and I never look at Mamie Gray's sad, white face that
it doesn't bring back a girl I knew just then whose heart was broken by
just such a shallow, selfish, adorable scoun--No, I won't use _that_
word in speaking of Jerrold; but it's what I fear. Rollins, you call him
generous. Well, so he is,--_lavish_, if you like, with his money and his
hospitality here in the post. Money comes easily to him, and goes; but
you boys misuse the term. _I_ call him selfish to the core, because he
can deny himself no luxury, no pleasure, though it may wring a woman's
life--or, more than that, her honor--to give it him." The captain was
tramping up and down the room now, as was his wont when excited; his
face was flushed, and his hand clinched. He turned suddenly and faced
the younger officer, who sat gazing uncomfortably at the rug in front of
the fireplace.

"Rollins, some day I may tell you a story that I've kept to myself all
these years. You won't wonder at my feeling as I do about these
goings-on of your friend Jerrold when you hear it all, but it was just
such a man as he who ruined one woman, broke the heart of another, and
took the sunshine out of the life of two men from that day to this. One
of them was your colonel, the other your captain. Now go to bed. I'm
going out." And, throwing down his pipe, regardless of the scattering
sparks and ashes, Captain Chester strode into th