On their return the shopping-party brought with them the articles he had mentioned.  He pronounced them all entirely satisfactory, and they were packed and sent northward with the addition of some pretty things for the dolls, contributed by Violet and Rosie.

Some unusual impulse of fatherly solicitude and affection led the captain to put his own address upon several envelopes in each writing-desk, stamping them also and adding a note to each of the three children.

To Max and Lulu he said that he wanted letters from them which should not pass through the hands of a third person, “letters that should be like a bit of private chat with papa.”

Seeing how tenderly and carefully the little Travillas were nurtured and what love was lavished upon them, had turned his thoughts frequently upon his own motherless ones, and set him to thinking and asking himself rather anxiously how they were faring in those respects.  He had come to realize more thoroughly than ever before his responsibility as a parent.

The Christmas work which had kept Violet busy in her studio was now finished, and henceforth she spent much more of her time with the rest of the family; greatly to Captain Raymond’s satisfaction, for much as he admired the other ladies and enjoyed conversing with them and with Mr. Dinsmore, he was quite conscious of a constant uneasiness and discontent when Violet absented herself from the room.

His admiration for her beauty and grace had been unbounded from the first, and gradually as he discovered more and more of her sterling worth, her sweetness and unselfishness of disposition, her talent, industry, and genuine piety, his heart had gone out to her in ardent affection; in fact with a deeper and stronger love than he had ever before known or dreamed of.

He began to ask himself how he could ever go away and leave her, and whether he dared seek to make her his own.  He was fully as loath as Donald Keith to appear in the role of fortune-hunter.  Would Mr. Dinsmore and his daughter, so noble themselves, be ready to impute so unworthy a motive to him?  He hoped not, he believed they would judge him by themselves.  And they who so fully knew and appreciated all that Violet was must see and believe that no man whose affections were not already engaged could be thrown into intimate association with her day after day, as he had been for so many weeks, and not learn to love her for herself alone.

Then he had learned incidentally from Dr. Conly, that the older daughter had married a poor artist with the full consent of her parents and grandfather, his lack of wealth being considered no objection to his suit.

Captain Raymond did not look upon wealth as the highest patent of nobility even in this republican country, but thought, in his manly independence, that his well-established reputation as an honorable, Christian gentleman, and officer of the United States Navy, made him in rank fully the peer of the Dinsmores and Travillas; and he believed that they would entirely agree with him in that.