'Her and her blind boy's scandalled company
I have forsworn.'
You have my blessing, Billy, but—
'Dost thou think because thou art virtuous
There shall be no more cakes and ale?'
Avaunt! I'll hie me to metheglin and Muldoon's." And off he went, leaving Ray half vexed, half shaken with laughter.
It must have been one o'clock when, looking up the row as he sat basking in the sunshine, he saw Gleason come out of Captain Truscott's quarters and rapidly nearing him along the walk. He had been idly looking over a newspaper and thinking intently over matters which he was beginning to find vastly interesting; but something in Gleason's appearance changed Mr. Ray's expression from that of the mingled contempt and indifference with which he generally met him into one of more active interest. The big and bulky lieutenant lurched unmistakably as he walked; his face was flushed, his eyes red. He was muttering angrily to himself, and shot a quick but far from intelligent glance at Ray as he passed.
"Now, what on earth could have prompted him to go to Truscott's looking like that?" thought Ray. "I wonder if Mrs. Truscott saw him. She did not go driving."
Presently there came a little knot of ladies down the row. They stopped to speak to Ray, and he rose, answering with smiling welcome, and they on the sidewalk and he, leaning against one of the pillars of the low wooden portico, were in the midst of a lively chat when his own door opened and there came from within his quarters Mrs. Truscott's soldier servant, an old cavalryman whose infirmities had made him glad, long since, to exchange the functions of a trooper for those of general messenger, bootblack, and scullion on better pay and rations. He had come in from the rear. He held out a note.
"Mrs. Truscott said I was to find you at once, sir."
"Pardon me, ladies, I will see what this is," he said, opening it leisurely with pleasant anticipations of an invitation for tea. He read two lines: the color left his face. Amaze, consternation, distress, were all pictured there in an instant.
"Excuse me! I must go to Mrs. Truscott at once," he said, and went limping eagerly, rapidly up the walk.