"You must," responded the voice.
Then Barrington delivered a crushing blow. "I have promised to marry some one else," he said, with great composure.
To Mrs. Douce's gasping, broken, indignant queries he replied that the lady's name was Magill, and that she was a widow possessed of ample means. There had long been an understanding between them, he declared, but he had been unwilling to marry without an independent property of his own. Unable to acquire this, he had hoped at least to gain distinction in the army. That hope he had sacrificed out of pure sympathy for Miss Natalia Douce's distress; and now he had concluded to marry without further delay.
VI.
I pass over the period of internal convulsion in the Douce hearts, widowed and maiden, which followed Barrington's disclosure. For a time their disconcertment was so obvious that Rawsden had it all his own way in making contemptuous remarks about them to Miss Sneef; and to judge from the conversation of these two singular young people, you would have supposed that nothing could give them such exquisite delight as to prove that all human beings are unspeakably false and absurd, and that if they could but have succeeded in showing each other—Miss Sneef on her part, and Rawsden on his—how they two were the falsest and absurdest of all, their happiness would have been complete.
But Natalia soon rallied from the shock of Barrington's engagement to Mrs. Magill, at least far enough to begin an exasperating warfare of innuendo, which, though it stabbed her own heart as well, brought a balm of revenge to her own wounds, but left Barrington quivering under the petty blows. She made frequent allusions to that neglected trunk belonging to the non-existent Captain Barrington, U.S.A.; affected to believe that he kept in it a complete set of defunct accoutrements, which she begged him to put on some time and show to the "family;" and in general taunted him most unfairly with his abandonment of his whilom noble resolve to seek the martial field.
Before long the entire "family" of boarders had joined more or less actively in this guerilla attack; and the worst of it was, that they always kept just beyond the pseudo-captain's range. He couldn't retort upon them without losing his dignity. At last he hit upon a masterly defence. One day he said to Natalia, carelessly, at the table: "Oh, as to my uniform that you've been asking about, I'll show it to you to-night! I am going to drill."
The effect was gratifying. Natalia grew pale at the thought that her cruel sneers had actually driven Barrington (whom she continued to adore in spite of his desertion) back to the cannon's mouth, so to speak. The other boarders were also deeply impressed, in their several degrees. These emotions were considerably modified, yet not wholly effaced, when the military aspirant finally appeared in his trappings; for he did not wear the United States uniform. He was clothed in the splendors of a militia major. He revealed to the little group of fellow-boarders, who had assembled with a sort of hushed solemnity to inspect him, that for some time he had been getting up a new, independent cavalry company, of which he was now the commander.
"And you're all organized?" asked one gentleman, gazing at the major as if he were an entire company in himself.
"Yes; first drill to-night," said Barrington, with a business-like air, lighting a cigar, and looking quite terrific.