A moment later she heard voices at the front door,—­a party of ladies who were going to spend the morning with the colonel’s wife at some “Dorcas society” work which many of them had embraced with enthusiasm.  “I want to see Miss Travers, just a minute,” she heard a voice say, and recognized the pleasant tones of Mrs. Curtis, the young wife of one of the infantry officers:  so a second time she put aside her writing, and then ran down to the front door.  Mrs. Curtis merely wanted to remind her that she must be sure to come and spend the afternoon with her and bring her music, and was dismayed to find that Miss Travers could not come before stable-call:  she had an engagement.  “Of course:  I might have known it:  you are besieged every hour.  Well, can you come to-morrow?  Do.”  And, to-morrow being settled upon, and despite the fact that several of the party waiting on the sidewalk looked cold and impatient, Mrs. Curtis found it impossible to tear herself away until certain utterly irrelevant matters had been lightly touched upon and lingeringly abandoned.  The officers were just beginning to pour forth from head-quarters when the group of ladies finally got under way again and Miss Travers closed the door.  It was now useless to return to her letter:  so she strolled into the parlor just as she heard her sister’s voice at the kitchen door: 

“Come right in here, Mrs. Clancy.  Now, quick, what is it?”

And from the dining-room came the answer, hurried, half whispered, and mysterious,—­

“He’s been drinkin’ ever since he got out of hospital, ma’am, an’ he’s worse than ever about Loot’nant Hayne.  It’s mischief he’ll be doin’, ma’am:  he’s crazy-like—­”

“Mrs. Clancy, you must watch him.  You—­Hush!”

And here she stopped short, for, in astonishment at what she had already heard, and in her instant effort to hear no more of what was so evidently not intended for her, Miss Travers hurried from the parlor, the swish of her skirts telling loudly of her presence there.  She went again to her room.  What could it mean?  Why was her proud, imperious Kate holding secret interviews with this coarse and vulgar woman?  What concern was it of hers that Clancy should be “worse” about Mr. Hayne?  It could not mean that the mischief he would do was mischief to the man who had saved his life and his property.  That was out of the question.  It could not mean that the poor, broken-down, drunken fellow had the means in his power of further harming a man who had already been made to suffer so much.  Indeed, Kate’s very exclamation, the very tone in which she spoke, showed a distress of mind that arose from no fear for one whom she hated as she hated Hayne.  Her anxiety was personal.  It was for her husband and for herself she feared, or woman’s tone and tongue never yet revealed a secret.  Nellie Travers stood in her room stunned and bewildered, yet trying hard to recall and put together all the