only a few of the cavalry officers
found his society attractive. He played delightfully; he was well read;
but in general talk he was not entertaining. "Altogether too
sepulchral,--or at least funereal," explained the cavalry. "He never
laughs, and rarely smiles, and he's as glum as a Quaker meeting," was
another complaint. So a social success was hardly to be predicted for
Mr. Hayne.

While he could not be invited where just a few infantry people were the
other guests, from a big general gathering or party he, of course, could
not be omitted; but there he would have his cavalry and medical friends
to talk to, and then there was Major Waldron. It was a grievous pity
that there should be such an element of embarrassment, but it couldn't
be helped. As the regimental adjutant had said, Hayne himself was the
main obstacle to his restoration to regimental friendship. No man who
piques himself on the belief that he is about to do a virtuous and
praiseworthy act will be apt to persevere when the object of his
benevolence treats him with cold contempt. If Mr. Hayne saw fit to
repudiate the civilities a few officers essayed to extend to him, no
others would subject themselves to similar rebuffs; and if he could
stand the _status quo_, why, the regiment could; and that, said the
Riflers, was the end of the matter.

But it was not the end, by a good deal. Some few of the ladies of the
infantry, actuated by Mrs. Rayner's vehement exposition of the case, had
aligned themselves on her side as against the post commander, and by
their general conduct sought to convey to the colonel and to the ladies
who were present at the first dinner given Mr. Hayne thorough
disapproval of their course. This put the cavalry people on their mettle
and led to a division in the garrison; and as Major Waldron was, in Mrs.
Rayner's eyes, equally culpable with the colonel, it so resulted that
two or three infantry households, together with some unmarried
subalterns, were arrayed socially against their own battalion commander
as well as against the grand panjandrum at post head-quarters. If it had
not been for the determined attitude of Mr. Hayne himself, the garrison
might speedily have been resolved into two parties,--Hayne and
anti-Hayne sympathizers; but the whole bearing of that young man was
fiercely repellent of sympathy; he would have none of it. "Hayne's
position," said Major Waldron, "is practically this: he holds that no
man who has borne himse