“Why poor Mr. Jerrold?” asked Aunt Grace, with laughing interest, as she noted the expression on her niece’s pretty face.

“Because he can’t bear Captain Armitage, and—­”

“Now, Alice!” said her mother, reprovingly.  “You must not take his view of the captain at all.  Remember what the colonel said of him—­”

“Mother dear,” protested Alice, laughing, “I have no doubt Captain Armitage is the paragon of a soldier, but he is unquestionably a most unpleasant and ungentlemanly person in his conduct to the young officers.  Mr. Hall has told me the same thing.  I declare, I don’t see how they can speak to him at all, he has been so harsh and discourteous and unjust.”  The color was rising in earnest now, but a warning glance in her mother’s eye seemed to check further words.  There was an instant’s silence.  Then Aunt Grace remarked,—­

“Alice, your next-door neighbor has vanished.  I think your vehemence has frightened him.”

Surely enough, the big, blue-eyed man in tweeds had disappeared.  During this brief controversy he had quickly and noiselessly let himself out of the open door, swung lightly to the ground, and was out of sight among the trees.

“Why, what a strange proceeding!” said Aunt Grace again.  “We are fully a mile and a half from the hotel, and he means to walk it in this glaring sun.”

Evidently he did.  The driver reined up at the moment in response to a suggestion from some one in a forward seat, and there suddenly appeared by the wayside, striding out from the shelter of the sumachs, the athletic figure of the stranger.

“Go ahead!” he called, in a deep chest-voice that had an unmistakable ring to it,—­the tone that one so readily recognizes in men accustomed to prompt action and command.  “I’m going across lots.”  And, swinging his heavy stick, with quick, elastic steps and erect carriage the man in gray plunged into a wood-path and was gone.

“Alice,” said Aunt Grace, again, “that man is an officer, I’m sure, and you have driven him into exile and lonely wandering.  I’ve seen so much of them when visiting my brother in the old days before my marriage that even in civilian dress it is easy to tell some of them.  Just look at that back, and those shoulders!  He has been a soldier all his life.  Horrors! suppose it should be Captain Armitage himself!”

Miss Renwick looked genuinely distressed, as well as vexed.  Certainly no officer but Captain Armitage would have had reason to leave the stage.  Certainly officers and their families occasionally visited Sablon in the summer-time, but Captain Armitage could hardly be here.  There was comforting assurance in the very note she held in her hand.

“It cannot be,” she said, “because Mr. Jerrold writes that they have just heard from him at Sibley.  He is still at the sea-shore, and will not return for a month.  Mr. Jerrold says he implored Captain Chester to let him have three days’ leave to come down here and have a sail and a picnic with us, and was told that it would be out of the question.”