“Yes, mamma, one reads the nobility of his nature in his face, and his bearing is soldierly.”

“Ah, my little girl! my heart misgives me that I hold you by a very frail tenure!” Elsie sighed between a smile and a tear, as she bent her head to look searchingly into the depths of the azure eyes.

Violet’s face crimsoned, and her head went down again into her mother’s lap.

“Mamma, you need not fear,” she said, very low and tremulously, “I have rejected his offer, and I cannot leave you.”

“I am much mistaken if he is so easily repulsed,” Elsie said.  “He is a brave soldier, and will renew the assault nor raise the siege of my daughter’s heart until he has brought it to a full if not unconditional surrender.”

“Mamma, I wish I could run away.”

“Come, then, to the Laurels with me, and you need not return until bedtime to-night, unless you choose.”

Vi’s face brightened, then clouded again.  “Thank you, mamma, I will go, yet it will be putting off the evil day for but a very little while.”

“It will give you time to think and analyze your own feelings, so that you will be the better prepared for the next assault,” was the playful rejoinder.  “Go now, dear child, and make yourself ready.  The carriage will be at the door almost immediately—­Arthur has consented to my taking the children in a close carriage.  They must return before sundown, but you need not be in such haste.”

Mr. Dinsmore did not find Capt.  Raymond looking so completely cast down as he had expected.  His face was slightly flushed, his expression somewhat perplexed and disappointed, but by no means despairing.

“I fear I have been too precipitate,” he said, in answer to his host’s inquiring look. “‘The more haste the less speed,’ as the old proverb has it.  I fear I frightened the dear girl by too sudden and vehement an avowal of my passion.  Yet I trust it may not be too late to retrieve my error.”

“She rejected your suit?” Mr. Dinsmore said interrogatively.

“Yes, she seemed to do so!” sighed the lover, “yet the objections she urged are not insurmountable.  She calls herself too young and foolish, but I hope to convince her that that is a mistake.  Young she is indeed, but very far from foolish.  She cannot leave her mother is another objection, but that I should not ask her to do—­as a landlubber might,” he added sportively, “would in all probability.  As much of my life must be spent at sea, it would not be worth while to set up a home of my own on land, if I had a wife who preferred to live with her mother.”

“Well, sir, that is certainly much in your favor,” said Mr. Dinsmore; “our greatest, almost our only objection to your suit being the thought of parting with the child of our love.”

When Violet came home that evening she did not rejoin the family in the parlor, but went directly to her own apartments.

“Where is mamma?” she inquired of her maid as she threw off her hat and cloak.