Mrs. Maynard’s eyes were anxious and troubled now.  She turned to her sister-in-law: 

“Do you think he seems any better, Grace?  I do not.”

“It is hard to say.  He was so nervously anxious to get away to see the general the very day you arrived here that there was not a moment in which I could ask him about himself; and since his return he has avoided all mention of it beyond saying it is nothing but indigestion and he would be all right in a few days.  I never knew him to suffer in that way in my life.  Is there any regimental matter that can be troubling him?” she asked, in lower tone.

“Nothing of any consequence whatever.  Of course the officers feel chagrined over their defeat in the rifle-match.  They had expected to stand very high, but Mr. Jerrold’s shooting was unexpectedly below the average, and it threw their team behind.  But the colonel didn’t make the faintest allusion to it.  That hasn’t worried him anywhere near as much as it has the others, I should judge.”

“I do not think it was all Mr. Jerrold’s fault, mamma,” said Miss Renwick, with gentle reproach and a very becoming flush.  “I’m going to stand up for him, because I think they all blame him for other men’s poor work.  He was not the only one on our team whose shooting was below former scores.”

“They claim that none fell so far below their expectations as he, Alice.  You know I am no judge of such matters, but Mr. Hoyt and Captain Gray both write the colonel that Mr. Jerrold had been taking no care of himself whatever and was entirely out of form.”

“In any event I’m glad the cavalry did no better,” was Miss Renwick’s loyal response.  “You remember the evening we rode out to the range and Captain Gray said that there was the man who would win the first prize from Mr. Jerrold,—­that tall cavalry sergeant who fainted away,—­Sergeant McLeod; don’t you remember, mother?  Well, he did not even get a place, and Mr. Jerrold beat him easily.”

Something in her mother’s eyes warned her to be guarded, and, in that indefinable but unerring system of feminine telegraphy, called her attention to the man sitting by the door.  Looking quickly to her right, Miss Renwick saw that he was intently regarding her.  At the mention of Fort Sibley the stranger had lowered his paper, revealing a bronzed face clean-shaven except for the thick blonde moustache, and a pair of clear, steady, searching blue eyes under heavy brows and lashes, and these eyes were very deliberately yet respectfully fixed upon her own; nor were they withdrawn in proper confusion when detected.  It was Miss Renwick whose eyes gave up the contest and returned in some sense of defeat to her mother’s face.

“What letters have you for the colonel?” asked Mrs. Maynard, coming au secours.

“Three,—­two of them from his devoted henchman Captain Chester, who writes by every mail, I should imagine; and these he will go off into some secluded nook with and come back looking blue and worried.  Then here’s another, forwarded from Sibley, too.  I do not know this hand.  Perhaps it is from Captain Armitage, who, they say, is to come back next month.  Poor Mr. Jerrold!”