“Ah, Neville! delighted to see you!  Mrs. Neville, of course!  I remember you well, madam!  And this young lady your daughter, I presume?” he added, turning from the elders to shake hands with Corona.

“No; not our daughter, I wish she were; but our young friend, Mrs. Rothsay, who is going with us to Farthermost,” Captain Neville explained.

“To join her husband!  One of the new set of officers turned out by the Academy!  Happy man!” exclaimed the colonel, warmly shaking Corona’s hand.

“No, sir; Mrs. Rothsay is a widow.  She goes out to join her only brother, Lieutenant Haught!” the captain again explained, in a low and faintly reproachful tone.

“Oh! ah!  I beg pardon, I am sure.  The mistake was absurd,” said the colonel, with a penitent air.

“When did you leave Washington?”

“A week ago to-day; but the boats were slow.”

“Pleasant journey, I hope?”

“Oh, yes, so far.”

At this moment the colonel’s wife came into the room.  She was a tall, gray-haired woman with a fair complexion and blue eyes, and dressed in black silk and a lace cap.  She shook hands with Captain and Mrs. Neville, who were old friends, and who then presented Mrs. Rothsay, whom the hostess received with much cordiality.

Meanwhile the colonel and the captain strolled out upon the piazza, to smoke each a cigar.  The former inquired more particularly into the history of the beautiful, pale woman who had come out under the protection of the captain and his wife.

Captain Neville told him all he knew of Mrs. Rothsay’s story—­namely, that she was the granddaughter of the famous Iron King, Aaron Rockharrt, lately deceased, and that she was the widow of the late Regulas Rothsay, who so mysteriously disappeared on the evening of his wedding before the day of his expected inauguration as governor of his native State, and who was afterward discovered to have been murdered by the Comanche Indians.

In the evening, when a number of officers dropped into the drawing room of the colonel’s quarters, our party were quite able to receive them.

One unexpected thing happened.  Among the callers was a certain Major ——­, a childless widower of middle age, short, thick-set, black-bearded and red-faced, with a bluff presence and a bluff voice, who fell—­yes, tumbled—­heels over head in love with Corona at first sight.

This catastrophe was so patent to all beholders as to excite equal wonder and mirthfulness.

Only Corona of all the company remained ignorant of the conquest she had made; ignorant, that is, until the visitors had all left the quarters, when her hostess said to her in a bantering tone: 

“You have subdued our major, my dear, utterly subdued him.  This is the first case of love at first sight that ever came under my notice, but it is an unmistakable one.  And, oh, I should say a malignant, if not a fatal, type of the disorder.”