FullReads

“I thought you were engaged to Miss Waring for this,” she says.

“I was,” he answers, savagely; “but I’m well out of it. I resigned in favor of a big ‘cit’ who’s worth only twenty thousand a year, Nan, and she has been engaged to him all this time and never let me know until to-night.”

“Willy!” she gasps. “Oh! I’m so glad–sorry, I mean! I never did like her.”

“I did, Nan, more’s the pity. I’m not the first she’s made a fool of;” and he turns away, hiding the chagrin in his young face. They are practically alone in this sheltered nook. Crowds are around them, but looking the other way. The rain is dripping from the trees without and pattering on the stone flags. McKay leans out into the night, and the sister’s loving heart yearns over him in his trouble.

“Willy,” she says, laying the little white-gloved hand on his arm, “it’s hard to bear, but she isn’t worthy any man’s love. Twice I’ve heard in the last two days that she makes a boast of it that ’twas to see her that some one risked his commission and so–kept Mr. Stanley from being here to-night. Willy, do you know who it was? Don’t you think he ought to have come forward like a gentleman, days ago, and told the truth? Will! What is it? Don’t look so! Speak to me, Willy,–your little Nan. Was there ever a time, dear, when my whole heart wasn’t open to you in love and sympathy?”

And now, just at this minute, the music begins again. Soft, sweet, yet with such a strain of pathos and of sadness running through every chord; it is the loveliest of all the waltzes played in his “First Class Camp,”–the one of all others he most loved to hear. Her heart almost bursts now to think of him in his lonely room, beyond hearing of the melody that is so dear to him, that is now so passionately dear to her,–“Love’s Sigh.” Doubtless, Philip had asked the leader days ago to play it here and at no other time. It is more than enough to start the tears long welling in her eyes. For an instant it turns her from thought of Willy’s own heartache.

“Will!” she whispers, desperately. “This was to have been Philip Stanley’s waltz–and I want you to take–something to him for me.”

He turns back to her again, his hands clinched, his teeth set, still thinking only of his own bitter humiliation,–of how that girl has fooled and jilted him,–of how for her sake he had brought all this trouble on his stanchest friend.

“Phil Stanley!” he exclaims. “By heaven! it makes me nearly mad to think of it!–and all for her sake,–all through me. Oh, Nan! Nan! I must tell you! It was for me,–to save me that—-“

“Willy!” and there is almost horror in her wide blue eyes. “Willy!” she gasps–“oh, don’t–don’t tell me that! Oh, it isn’t true? Not you–not you, Willy. Not my brother! Oh, quick! Tell me.”

Startled, alarmed, he seizes her hand.

“Little sister! What–what has happened–what is—-“

But there is no time for more words. The week of misery; the piteous strain of the long evening; the sweet, sad, wailing melody,–his favorite waltz; the sudden, stunning revelation that it was for Willy’s sake that he–her hero–was now to suffer, he whose heart she had trampled on and crushed! It is all more than mortal girl can bear. With the beautiful strains moaning, whirling, ringing, surging through her brain, she is borne dizzily away into darkness and oblivion.

* * * * *

There follows a week in which sadder faces yet are seen about the old hotel. The routine of the Academy goes on undisturbed. The graduating class has taken its farewell of the gray walls and gone upon its way. New faces, new voices are those in the line of officers at parade. The corps has pitched its white tents under the trees beyond the grassy parapet of Fort Clinton, and, with the graduates and furlough-men gone, its ranks look pitifully thinned. The throng of visitors has vanished. The halls and piazzas at Craney’s are well-nigh deserted, but among the few who linger there is not one who has not loving inquiry for the young life that for a brief while has fluttered so near the grave. “Brain fever,” said the doctors to Uncle Jack, and a new anxiety was lined in his kindly face as he and Will McKay sped on their mission to the Capitol. They had to go, though little Nan lay sore stricken at the Point.