While the letters of her loyal friend, Lane, veiled all that was hard and repulsive in his service, she knew that the days of drill and equipment would soon be over, and that the new regiment must participate in the dangers of active duty.  This was equally true of Strahan and Blauvelt.  She laughed heartily over their illustrated journal, which, in the main, gave the comic side of their life.  But she never laid it aside without a sigh, for she read much between the lines, and knew that the hour of battle was rapidly approaching.  Thus far they had been within the fortifications at Washington, for the authorities had learned the folly of sending undisciplined recruits to the front.

At last, when the beautiful month of October was ended, and Lee’s shattered army was rested and reorganized, McClellan once more crossed the Potomac.  Among the reinforcements sent to him were the regiments of which Lane and Strahan were members.  The letters of her friends proved that they welcomed the change and with all the ardor of brave, loyal men looked forward to meeting the enemy.  In heart and thought she went with them, but a sense of their danger fell, like a shadow, across her spirit.  She appeared years older than the thoughtless girl for whom passing pleasure and excitement had been the chief motives of life; but in the strengthening lines of her face a womanly beauty was developing which caused even strangers to turn and glance after her.

If Merwyn still retained some hold upon her thoughts and curiosity, so much could scarcely be said of her sympathy.  He had disappeared from the moment when she had harshly dismissed him, and she was beginning to feel that she had been none too severe, and to believe that his final words had been spoken merely from impulse.  If he were amusing himself abroad, Marian, in her intense loyalty, would despise him; if he were permitting himself to be identified with his mother’s circle of Southern sympathizers, the young girl’s contempt would be tinged with detestation.  He had approached her too nearly, and humiliated her too deeply, to be readily forgotten or forgiven.  His passionate outbreak at last had been so intense as to awaken strong echoes in her woman’s soul.  If return to a commonplace fashionable life was to be the only result of the past, she would scarcely ever think of him without an angry sparkle in her eyes.

After she had learned that her friends were in the field and therefore exposed to the dangers of battle at any time, she had soliloquized, bitterly:  “He promised to ’measure everything by the breadth of my woman’s soul.’  What does he know about a true woman’s soul?  He has undoubtedly found his selfish nature and his purse more convenient gauges of the world.  Well, he knows of one girl who cannot be bought.”