"Is it illness, Mr. Gleason?"
"No; I don't know that it is."
"Then, for one, I feel confident that he will be here in abundant time to go by first opportunity," she said, with quiet meaning.
"Who may this swell be?" languidly remarked one of the officers, looking down the road towards the gate. All eyes followed his in an instant.
Speeding at easy lope upon a spirited sorrel a horseman came jauntily up the row. The erect carriage, the perfect seat, the ease and grace with which his lithe form swayed with every motion of his steed, all present could see at a glance. Mrs. Stannard rose quickly to her feet; her gaze becoming eager, then joyous.
"Look!" she almost cried. "It's Mr. Ray himself!"
In another minute, throwing himself lightly from the saddle, and tossing the reins to a statuesque orderly, the horseman came beaming through the gate, and Mrs. Stannard, to Miss Sanford's mingled amaze and approbation, was warmly grasping both his hands in hers. Mrs. Truscott, blushing brightly and showing welcome and pleasure in her lovely eyes, but with the reserve of younger wifehood, had held forth one little hand. Then she heard the voluble gush with which Mrs. Turner precipitated herself upon him, and, while he remained captive—as he had to—in that fair matron's hands, laughingly answering her thronging questions, Marion Sanford had her first look at the young officer who had been the subject of such varying report. First impressions are ever strong, and what she saw was this: a lithe, deep-chested, square-shouldered young fellow, with nerve and spring in every motion, standing bare-headed before them with the sunlight dancing on his close-cropped hair and shapely head. His eyes were dark, and heavily shaded with thick brows and long curling lashes, but the eyes brightened with every laughing word,—were full of life and health and straightforwardness and fun. She could not but note how clear and brave and wide-open they were, despite the little wrinkles gathered at the corners and a faint shading underneath. His forehead, what could be seen of it when he tossed aside the dark, wavy "bang" that fell almost as low as her own, was white and smooth, but temples, cheeks, the smooth-shaven jaws, and the round, powerful throat were bronzed and tanned by sun and wind, and his white teeth gleamed all the whiter through the shading of the thick, curling, dark moustache, and the lips that laughed so merrily were soft and pink as any woman's might be; at least they were when he bowed and smiled and spoke her name when introduced to her, and when he nodded companionably to the bowing group of officers, to whom Mrs. Stannard presented him with marked pride, "Mr. Ray—of Ours," but how, for a second, his eye flashed and how rigid a spasm crossed his lips when Gleason's name was mentioned. To him he merely nodded, and instantly turned his back. All this and more Miss Sanford noted by that electric process which was known to women long before lightning was photographed, and enabled the sex to see in a quarter-second intricate details of feminine costume that it would take the nimblest tongue ten minutes to describe. She noticed his dress, so unlike the precise attire of his comrades, who wore, to the uttermost detail, the regulation uniform. He had tossed a broad-brimmed, light-colored scouting hat upon the little grass plat as he entered, and now stood before them in the field rig he so well adorned. A dark-blue, double-breasted, broad-collared flannel shirt, tucked in at the waist in snugly-fitting breeches of Indian-tanned buckskin, while Sioux leggings encased his legs from knee to ankle, and his feet were shod substantially in alligator-skin. Mexican spurs were at his heels; a broad leather belt bristling with cartridges, and supporting knife and revolver, hung at his waist; a red silk handkerchief was loosely knotted at his throat, and soft brown gauntlets covered his hands until they were discarded as he greeted them. If ever man looked the picture of elastic health and vigor it was Mr. Ray. This, then, was something like the cavalry life of which she had heard so much. Marion Sanford, despite Eastern education and refinement, was so unconventional as to find something more attractive in Mr. Ray in this same field rig than in Mr. Gleason in faultlessly accurate uniform.
"Why, Mr. Ray, how very well you look!" was Mrs. Turner's exclamation, "and somebody said you had been ill."
"I? No indeed! I never felt better in my life."
"But where have you been? When did you come? Why didn't you write?" were some among the countless questions thrust upon him.