rap how soon we're rid of him or her,--the sooner
the better; only I hate to hear these fellows laughing and sneering
about Mrs. Doyle." And here the young fellow hesitated. "Ferry, you know
I'm as fond of Sam Waring as any of you. I liked him better than any man
in his class when we wore the gray. When they were yearlings we were
plebes, and devilled and tormented by them most unmercifully day and
night. I took to him then for his kindly, jolly ways. No one ever knew
him to say or do a cross or brutal thing. I liked him more every year,
and missed him when he was graduated. I rejoiced when he got his
transfer to us. It's because I like him so much that I hate to hear
these fellows making their little flings now."

"What flings?" said Ferry.

"Well, you know as much as I do. You've heard as much, too, I haven't a
doubt."

"Nobody's said anything about Sam Waring in my hearing that reflected on
him in any way worth speaking of," said Ferry, yet not very stoutly.

"Not on him so much, perhaps, as the world looks at this sort of thing,
but on her. She's young, pretty, married to a man years her senior, a
snuffy, frowzy old Frenchman. She's alone with her child and one or two
servants from early morning till late evening, and with that weazened
little monkey of a man the rest of the time. The only society she sees
is the one or two gossipy old women of both sexes who live along the
levee here. The only enjoyment she has is when she can get to her
mother's up in town, or run up to the opera when she can get Lascelles
to take her. That old mummy cares nothing for music and still less for
the dance; she loves both, and so does Waring. _Monsieur le Mari_ goes
out into the foyer between the acts to smoke his cigarette and gossip
with other relics like himself. Waring has never missed a night she
happened to be there for the last six weeks. I admit he is there many a
time when she is not, but after he's had a few words with the ladies in
the general's box, what becomes of him? I don't know, because I'm seldom
there, but Dryden and Taggart and Jack Merton of the infantry can tell
you. He is sitting by her in the D'Hervilly _loge grillee_ and going
over the last act with her and rhapsodizing about Verdi, Bellini,
Mozart, or Gounod,--Gounod especially and the garden-scene from
'Faust.'"

"Isn't her mother with her, and, being in mourning, doesn't she have to
stay in her latticed loge instead of promenading in the foyer and
dr