Mrs. Rayner, gazing from her parlor windows, saw that all the officers had come out except one,—­her husband,—­and with a moan of misery she covered her face with her hands and sank upon the sofa.  With cheeks as white as her sister’s, with eyes full of trouble and perplexity, but tearless, Nellie Travers stepped quickly into the room and put a trembling white hand upon the other’s shoulder: 

“Kate, it is no time for so bitter an estrangement as this.  I have done simply what our soldier father would have done had he been here.  I am fully aware of what it must cost me.  I knew when I did it that you would never again welcome me to your home.  Once East again, you and I can go our ways; I won’t burden you longer; but is it not better that you should tell me in what way your husband or you can have been injured by what I have done?”

Mrs. Rayner impatiently shook away the hand.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” was the blunt answer.  “You have carried out your threat and—­ruined us:  that’s all.”

“What can you mean?  Do you want me to think that because Mr. Hayne’s innocence may be established your husband was the guilty man?  Certainly your manner leads to that inference; though his does not, by any means.”

“I don’t want to talk, I tell you.  You’ve had your way,—­done your work.  You’ll see soon enough the hideous web of trouble you’ve entangled about my husband.  Don’t you dare say—­don’t you dare think”—­and now she rose with sudden fury—­“that he was the—­that he lost the money!  But that’s what all others will think.”

“If that were true, Kate, there would be this difference between his trouble and Mr. Hayne’s:  Captain Rayner would have wife, wealth, and friends to help him bear the cross; Mr. Hayne has borne it five long years unaided.  I pray God the truth has been brought to light.”

What fierce reply Mrs. Rayner might have given, who knows? but at that instant a quick step was heard on the piazza, the door opened suddenly, and Captain Rayner entered with a rush.  The pallor had gone; a light of eager, half-incredulous joy beamed from his eyes, he threw his cap upon the floor, and his wife had risen and thrown her arms about his neck.

“Have they found him?” was her breathless question. “What has happened?  You look so different.”

“Found him?  Yes; and he has told everything?”

“Told—­what?”

“Told that he and Gower were the men.  They took it all.”

“Clancy!—­and Gower!  The thieves, do you mean?  Is that—­is that what he confessed?” she asked, in wild wonderment, in almost stupefied amaze, releasing him from her arms and stepping back, her eyes searching his face.

“Nothing else in the world, Kate.  I don’t understand it at all.  I’m all a-tremble yet.  It clears Hayne utterly.  It at least explains how I was mistaken.  But what—­what could she have meant?”