He is generous and I stand his friend"? Was there one of them, one
of theirs, for whom he had ever denied himself a pleasure, great or
small? He looked at poor old Gray, with his wrinkled, anxious face, and
thought of his distress of mind. Only a few thousands--not three years'
pay--had the veteran scraped and saved and stored away for his little
girl, whose heart was aching with its first cruel sorrow,--_his_ work,
_his_ undoing, his cursed, selfish greed for adulation, his reckless
love of love. The morrow's battle, if it came, might leave her orphaned
and alone, and, poor as it was, a father's pitying sympathy could not be
her help with the coming year. Would Gray mourn him if the fortune of
war made _him_ the victim? Would any one of those averted faces look
with pity and regret upon his stiffening form? Would there be any one on
earth to whom his death would be a sorrow, but Nina? Would it even be a
blow to her? She loved him wildly, he knew that; but _would_ she did she
but dream the truth? He knew her nature well. He knew how quickly such
burning love could turn to fiercest hate when convinced that the object
was utterly untrue. He had said nothing to her of the photograph,
nothing at all of Alice except to protest time and again that his
attentions to her were solely to win the good will of the colonel's
family and of the colonel himself, so that he might be proof against the
machinations of his foes. And yet had he not, that very night on which
he crossed the stream and let her peril her name and honor for one
stolen interview--had he not gone to her exultant welcome with a
traitorous knowledge gnawing at his heart? That very night, before they
parted at the colonel's door had he not lied to Alice Renwick?--had he
not denied the story of his devotion to Miss Beaubien, and was not his
practised eye watching eagerly the beautiful dark face for one sign that
the news was welcome, and so precipitate the avowal trembling on his
lips that it was _her_ he madly loved,--not Nina? Though she hurriedly
bade him good-night, though she was unprepared for any such
announcement, he well knew that Alice Renwick's heart fluttered at the
earnestness of his manner, and that he had indicated far more than he
had said. Fear--not love--had drawn him to Nina Beaubien that night, and
hope had centred on her more beautiful rival, when the discoveries of
the night involved him in the first trembling symptoms of the downfall
to come. And