This playing at ghosts was the most innocent of the amusements indulged in by the choice young spirits who inhabited the lichened, red-brick building at the top of the town bearing ‘W.D.’ and a broad arrow on its quoins.  Far more serious escapades—­levities relating to love, wine, cards, betting—­were talked of, with no doubt more or less of exaggeration.  That the Hussars, Captain Maumbry included, were the cause of bitter tears to several young women of the town and country is unquestionably true, despite the fact that the gaieties of the young men wore a more staring colour in this old-fashioned place than they would have done in a large and modern city.

CHAPTER II

Regularly once a week they rode out in marching order.

Returning up the town on one of these occasions, the romantic pelisse flapping behind each horseman’s shoulder in the soft south-west wind, Captain Maumbry glanced up at the oriel.  A mutual nod was exchanged between him and the person who sat there reading.  The reader and a friend in the room with him followed the troop with their eyes all the way up the street, till, when the soldiers were opposite the house in which Laura lived, that young lady became discernible in the balcony.

‘They are engaged to be married, I hear,’ said the friend.

‘Who—­Maumbry and Laura?  Never—­so soon?’

‘Yes.’

’He’ll never marry.  Several girls have been mentioned in connection with his name.  I am sorry for Laura.’

‘Oh, but you needn’t be.  They are excellently matched.’

‘She’s only one more.’

’She’s one more, and more still.  She has regularly caught him.  She is a born player of the game of hearts, and she knew how to beat him in his own practices.  If there is one woman in the town who has any chance of holding her own and marrying him, she is that woman.’

This was true, as it turned out.  By natural proclivity Laura had from the first entered heart and soul into military romance as exhibited in the plots and characters of those living exponents of it who came under her notice.  From her earliest young womanhood civilians, however promising, had no chance of winning her interest if the meanest warrior were within the horizon.  It may be that the position of her uncle’s house (which was her home) at the corner of West Street nearest the barracks, the daily passing of the troops, the constant blowing of trumpet-calls a furlong from her windows, coupled with the fact that she knew nothing of the inner realities of military life, and hence idealized it, had also helped her mind’s original bias for thinking men-at-arms the only ones worthy of a woman’s heart.

Captain Maumbry was a typical prize; one whom all surrounding maidens had coveted, ached for, angled for, wept for, had by her judicious management become subdued to her purpose; and in addition to the pleasure of marrying the man she loved, Laura had the joy of feeling herself hated by the mothers of all the marriageable girls of the neighbourhood.