contented.  I knew little of the young lady except by common report, which spoke of her as the sweetest and kindest damsel in Abingdon.  But now I have seen her, I wonder not at your choice.  During the fortnight we have been together I have watched her closely, and I find in her a rare combination of gentleness and firmness.  You have won her heart, Harry, though how she can have kept thee in mind all this time is more than I can tell.  Her brother tells me that he placed no pressure upon her either for or against, though he desired much for your sake, and from the love he bore you, that she should accept of your suit.  Now you had better go down, and learn from her own lips how it stands with her.”

It need not to describe the meeting between Harry and his old friends.  Herbert was warm and cordial as of old.  Lucy was but little changed since Harry had seen her four years before, save that she was more fair and womanly.

“Your letter gave me,” Herbert said, “a mixed feeling of pleasure and pain.  I knew that my little sister has always looked upon you as a hero of romance, and though I knew not that as a woman her heart still turned to you, yet she refused so sharply and shrewishly all the suitors who came to her, that I suspected that her thoughts of you were more than a mere child’s fancy.  When your letter came I laid no pressure upon her, just as in other cases I have held aloof, and indeed have gained some ill-will at the hands of old friends because I would not, as her brother, and the head of the family, lay stress upon her.  I read your letter to her, and she at first said she was ready to obey my wishes in the matter, and to go with you to Virginia if I bade her.  I said that in such a matter it was her will and not mine which I wished to consult, and thus pressed into a corner, she owned that she would gladly go with you.”

“Harry,” the girl said, “for my tongue is not as yet used to your new title, under other circumstances I should have needed to be wooed and won like other girls.  But seeing how strangely you are placed, and that you were about to start across the sea, to be absent perhaps for many years, I felt that it would not be worthy either of me or you were I to affect a maiden coyness and so to throw difficulties in your way.  I feel the honor of the offer you have made me.  That you should for so many years have been absent and seen the grand ladies of the court, and have yet thought of your little playfellow, shows that your heart is as true and good as I of old thought it to be, and I need feel no shame in acknowledging that I have ever thought of you with affection.”