It was seldom, indeed, that Major Lacey ventured so far from his home, in view of his increasing age, with which his infirmities waxed in proportion, except, indeed, on the various occasions of Confederate reunions, when his years fell from him, and the scales dropped from his eyes, and he was once more a dashing young officer with his sword in his hand and his heart in his cause. He was now returning from one of these symposia, and the old soldier would canvass its incidents, and discuss its personnel, and repeat the toasts, and recount the old stories and live again in the days of yore, growing ever dimmer, till the next reunion would endow the past with reviviscence and it would glow anew and the dull present would sink out of sight. He was barely ensconced in his chair when Miss Dean gaily accosted him.
“Yes,--here we are, indeed, Major,--you remember me?--Miss Hildegarde Dean,--but you ought to have been on deck when we were trying to get away. It was just like an attempt to jump over a fence by pulling on the rosettes of your slippers,--wasn’t it, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney?”
“Oh, she didn’t witness it,” said Floyd-Rosney hastily, reminded of his displeasure because of her tardiness. “Too late,--_as usual_. She closely resembles Athelstane the Unready. You remember the Saxon nobleman, Major Lacey.”
His bland patronage was a bit more insufferable than his obvious disapproval, if such comparison be attempted, for the casual stranger had done naught to incur his unwelcome benignities, whereas his wife, by consenting to become his wife, had brought her doom upon her own head.
The receptivity of the object of his grace in this instance was blunted by misunderstanding. “Well, now,” the Major replied, knitting his brows, “there was a foreign nobleman--a native of Saxony,--for a time on the staff of General Lancaster while I, too, was a member of his military family. This stranger was eager to see our artillery in action,--greatly interested in the Gatling gun,--it was new, then, invented by a gentleman from North Carolina. But I don’t remember that the officer’s name was Athelstane,--my memory is not so good as it once was,--his name has escaped me. But he had been a lieutenant of the Line in his own country,--light artillery.”