when he withdrew, soon after the trumpets sounded
tattoo, and the ladies fell to discussing him, as women will, there was
but one verdict,--his manners were perfect.

But the colonel said more than that. He had found him far better read
than any other officer of his age he had ever met; and one and all they
expressed the hope that they might see him frequently. No wonder it was
of momentous importance to him. It was the opening to a new life. It
meant that here at least he had met soldiers and gentlemen and their
fair and gracious wives who had welcomed him to their homes, and, though
they must have known that a pall of suspicion and crime had overshadowed
his past, they believed either that he was innocent of the grievous
charge or that his years of exile and suffering had amply atoned. It was
a happy evening indeed to him; but there was gloom at Captain Rayner's.

The captain himself had gone out soon after tattoo. He found that the
parlor was filled with young visitors of both sexes, and he was in no
mood for merriment. Miss Travers was being welcomed to the post in
genuine army style, and was evidently enjoying it. Mrs. Rayner was
flitting nervously in and out of the parlor with a cloud upon her brow,
and for once in her life compelled to preserve temporary silence upon
the subject uppermost in her thoughts. She had been forbidden to speak
of it to her husband; yet she knew he had gone out again with every
probability of needing some one to talk to about the matter. She could
not well broach the topic in the parlor, because she was not at all sure
how Captain and Mrs. Gregg of the cavalry would take it; and they were
still there. She was a loyal wife; her husband's quarrel was hers, and
more too; and she was a woman of intuition even keener than that which
we so readily accord the sex. She knew, and knew well, that a hideous
doubt had been preying for a long time in her husband's heart of hearts,
and she knew still better that it would crush him to believe it was even
suspected by any one else. Right or wrong, the one thing for her to do,
she doubted not, was to maintain the original guilt against all comers,
and to lose no opportunity of feeding the flame that consumed Mr.
Hayne's record and reputation. He was guilty,--he must be guilty; and
though she was a Christian according to her view of the case,--a pillar
of the Church in matters of public charity and picturesque conformity to
all the rubric called for in t