Full of bliss and comfort was Mrs. Rayner’s soul as she journeyed westward to rejoin her husband at the distant frontier post she had not seen since the early spring.  Army woman as she was, born and bred under the shadow of the flag, a soldier’s daughter, a soldier’s wife, she had other ambitions for her beautiful Nell.  Worldly to the core, she herself would never have married in the army but for the unusual circumstance of a wealthy subaltern among the officers of her father’s regiment.  Tradition had it that Mr. Rayner was not among the number of those who sighed for Kate Travers’s guarded smiles.  Her earlier victims were kept a-dangling until Rayner, too, succumbed, and then were sent adrift.  She meant that no penniless subaltern should carry off her “baby sister,”—­they had long been motherless,—­and a season at the sea-shore had done her work well.  Steven Van Antwerp, with genuine distress and loneliness, went back to his duties in Wall Street after seeing them safely on their way to the West.  “Guard her well for me,” he whispered to Mrs. Rayner.  “I dread those fellows in buttons.”  And he shivered unaccountably as he spoke.

Nellie was pledged, therefore, and this youth in the Pullman was not one of “those fellows in buttons,” so far as Mrs. Rayner knew, but she was ready to warn him off, and meant to do so, until, to her surprise, she saw that he gave no symptom of a desire to approach.  By noon of the second day she was as determined to extract from him some sign of interest as she had been determined to resent it.  I can in no wise explain or account for this.  The fact is stated without remark.

“What on earth can we be stopping so long here for?” was Mrs. Rayner’s somewhat petulant inquiry, addressed to no one in particular.  There was no reply.  Miss Travers was busily twitching the ears of the kitten at the moment and sparring with upraised finger at the threatening paw.

“Do look out of the window, Nell, and see.”

“There is nothing to see, Kate,—­nothing but whirling drifts and a big water-tank all covered with ice.  Br-r-r-r! how cold it looks!” she answered, after vainly flattening her face against the inner pane.

“There must be something the matter, though,” persisted Mrs. Rayner.  “We have been here full five minutes, and we are behind time now.  At this rate we’ll never get to Warrener to-night.  I do wish the porter would stay here where he belongs.”

The young man quietly laid down his book and arose.  “I will inquire, madame,” he said, with grave courtesy.  “You shall know in a moment.”

“How very kind of you!” said the lady.  “Indeed I must not trouble you.  I’m sure the porter will be here after a while.”

And even as she spoke, and as he was pulling on an overcoat, the train rumbled off again.  Then came an exclamation, this time from the younger: 

“Why, Kate!  Look! see all these men,—­and horses!  Why, they are soldiers,—­cavalry!  Oh, how I love to see them again!  But, oh, how cold they look!—­frozen!”