"_Knew_ he would! Why, Nellie, what do you mean? He didn't tell you that
he was to see Captain Rayner. He couldn't have known."

"But I knew, Kate; and I told him how the captain had suffered."

"But how could you know that he would shake hands with him?"

"He promised me."

The silence was unbroken for a moment. Nellie Travers could hear the
beating of her own heart as she nestled closer to her sister and stole a
hand into hers. Mrs. Rayner was trying hard to be dutiful, stern,
unbending, to keep _her_ faith with the distant lover in the East,
whether Nell was true or no; but she had been so humbled, so changed, so
shaken, by the events of the past few weeks, that she felt all her old
spirit of guardianship ebbing away. "Must I give you up, Nell? and must
he, too?--Mr. Van Antwerp?"

"He has not answered my last letter, Kate. It is nearly a week since I
have heard from him."

"What did you write, Nellie?"

"What I had done twice before,--that he ought to release me."

"And--is Clancy's the only confession you have heard to-day?"

"The only one." A pause: then, "I know what you mean, Kate; but he is
not the man to--to offer his love to a girl he knows is pledged to
another."

"But if you were free, Nellie? Tell me."

"I have no right to say, Kate; but"--and two big tears were welling up
into her brave eyes, as she clasped her hands and stretched them
yearningly before her--"shall I tell you what I think a girl would say
if she were free and had won his love?"

"What, Nellie?"

"She would say, 'Ay.' No woman with a heart could leave a man who has
borne so much and come through it all so bravely."

Poor Mrs. Rayner! Humbled and chastened as she was, what refuge had she
but tears, and then--prayer?

XIX.

Within the week succeeding the departure of the Rayners and Miss
Travers, Lieutenant Hayne's brother-in-law and his remarkably attractive
sister were with him in garrison and helping him fit up the new quarters
which the colonel had rather insisted on his moving into and occupying,
even though two unmarried subalterns had to move out and make way for
him. This they seemed rather delighted to do. There was a prevailing
sentiment at Warrener that nothing was too good for Hayne nowadays; and
he took all this adulation so quietly and modestly that there was
difficulty in telling just how it affected him. Towards those who had
known him well in the days of his early service he still maintained a
d