r. Hayne's reception
at the post, and with all the pent-up irritability which that episode
had generated she could not have contained herself and slept. But here
Miss Travers came to her relief. Her beauty, her winsome ways, her
unqualified delight in everything that was soldierly, speedily rendered
her vastly attractive to all the young officers in garrison. Graham and
Foster of the infantry, Merton, Webster, and Royce of the cavalry,
haunted the house at all manner of hours, and the captain bade them
welcome and urged them to come oftener and stay later, and told Mrs.
Rayner he wanted some kind of a supper or collation every night. He set
before his guests a good deal of wine, and drank a good deal more
himself than he had ever been known to do before, and they were keeping
very late hours at Rayner's, for, said the captain, "I don't care if
Nellie is engaged: she shall have a good time while she's here; and if
the boys know all about it,--goodness knows you've told them often
enough, Kate,--and they don't mind it, why, it's nobody's
business,--here, at least."
What Mr. Van Antwerp might think or care was another matter. Rayner
never saw him, and did not know him. He rather resented it that Van
Antwerp had never written to him and asked his consent. As Mrs. Rayner's
husband and Nellie's brother-in-law, it seemed to him he stood _in loco
parentis_; but Mrs. Rayner managed the whole thing herself, and he was
not even consulted. If anything, he rather enjoyed the contemplation of
Van Antwerp's fidgety frame of mind as described to him by Mrs. Rayner
about the time it became apparent to her that Nellie was enjoying the
attentions of which she was so general an object, and that the captain
was sitting up later and drinking more wine than was good for him. She
was aware that the very number of Nell's admirers would probably prevent
her becoming entangled with any one of them, but she needed something to
scold about, and eagerly pitched upon this. She knew well that she could
not comfort her husband in the anxiety that was gnawing at his
heart-strings, but she was jealous of comfort that might come to him
from any other source, and the Lethe of wine and jolly companionship she
dreaded most of all. Long, long before, she had induced him to promise
that he would never offer the young officers spirits in his house. She
would not prohibit wine at table, she said; but she never thought of
there coming a time when he himself woul
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