Her chief hope for him still centred in Miss Lou, upon whom his thoughts were fixed with a steadfastness and earnestness which his mother fondly believed would win her eventually, “I’m sure,” she reasoned, “Captain Maynard has made no deep impression.  He is about to depart.  All will soon be gone, and the old monotony of plantation life will be resumed.  After what has happened Louise will not be able to endure this.  Madison will return, older and wiser from experience and she, with nothing else to occupy her thoughts will react, like all impulsive natures, from her opposition.  Next to winning her or her favor from the start, he has scored a success in waking a hostility far removed from fatal indifference.”

She maintained an affectionate manner toward her niece and never discussed the hope she entertained and expectation of calling her daughter.  In truth, she had won the girl’s respect and goodwill in a very high degree.  She had been a kind and successful nurse among the wounded, confining her efforts chiefly to the Confederates.  She had also been a dignified lady in all the scenes they had passed through.  Her weakness was her son, yet the girl was compelled to admit that it was the weakness of love.  In seeking to bring about the detested union a motherly heart and feeling toward her had ever been apparent.

The girl was already becoming depressed by a presentiment of the dull, stagnant days to come.  Scoville had been lost in the great outside, unknown world completely.  She was suffering from reaction after the strong excitements and fatigues of her experience.  Her two lovers, remaining on the scene, possessed a sort of goading interest which compelled her to think of them, but she contemplated their near departure without regret.  Nothing in her nature answered to their looks, words and evident desires.  She felt that she would as soon marry one as the other, and that she would rather be buried beside Captain Hanfield and take the journey of which Uncle Lusthah had quaintly spoken than wed either.  Yet in her lassitude she feared that she could now be compelled to marry either or any one if enough active force was employed, so strangely had ebbed her old fearless spirit.

It were with a kind of wondering pity that she looked at Maynard and saw the evidences of an honest, ardent attachment.  “Why does he feel so?” she asked herself.  “I have done nothing for him, given no encouragement, and would not care if I never saw him again.  I merely wish him well, as I do so many others.  Why can’t he see this, and just act on the truth?  He says he is coming to see me every chance he gets and tries to make me feel that he’ll never give me up.  Perhaps if I should let him speak plainly he would see how useless it all would be.”

Circumstances apparently favored the half-formed purpose.  Languid from the heat of the day, she went out on the piazza after supper, sat down on the upper step and leaned against a rose-entwined pillar.  Maynard was entranced by the picture she made and promptly availed himself of the opportunity.  Every one else had disappeared except Zany, of whom glimpses could be caught through the open windows of the supper-room; but she did not count.  Sitting on a lower step so as to be in a measure at her feet Maynard began.