“I should hope so; and so have you, papa.  Has he formally demanded my hand with the condition that you stop the war, and inform the politicians that this is their quarrel, and that they must fight it out with toothpicks?”

“No; his request was more modest than that.”

“You think I am dying with curiosity, but I can wait until we get home.”

When they returned, Mr. Vosburgh went to his library, for he was somewhat owlish in his habits.

Marian soon joined him, and said:  “You must retire as soon as you have finished that cigar.  Even the momentous Mr. Merwyn shall not keep us up a second longer.  Indeed, I am so sleepy already that I may ask you to begin your tale to-night, and end with ‘to be continued.’”

He looked at her so keenly that her color rose a little, then said, “I think, my dear, you will listen till I say ‘concluded;’” and he repeated the substance of Merwyn’s words.

She heard him with a perplexed little frown.  “What do you think I ought to do, papa?”

“Do you remember the conversation we had here last June?”

“Yes; when shall I forget it?”

“Well, since you wish my opinion I will give it frankly.  It then became your ambition to make the most and best of men over whom you had influence, if they were worth the effort.  Merwyn has been faulty and unmanly, as he fully admits himself, but he has proved apparently that he is not commonplace.  You must take your choice, either to resent the past, or to help him carry out his better purposes.  He does not ask much, although no doubt he hopes for far more.  In granting his request you do not commit yourself to his hopes in the least.”

“Well, papa, he said that I couldn’t possess a woman’s heart and cast him off in utter contempt, so I think I shall have to put him on probation.  But he must be careful not to presume again.  I can be friendly to many, but a friend to very few.  Before he suggests that relation he must prove himself the peer of other friends.”

CHAPTER XX.

“You think me A coward.”

Merwyn had not been long in the city before he was waited upon and asked to do his share towards sustaining the opera, and he had carelessly taken a box which had seldom been occupied.  On the evening after his interview with Mr. Vosburgh, his feeling of suspense was so great that he thought he could beguile a few hours with music.  He found, however, that the light throng, and even the harmonious sounds, irritated, rather than diverted, his perturbed mind, and he returned to his lonely home, and restlessly paced apartments rendered all the more dreary by their magnificence.

He proved his solicitude in a way that led Mr. Vosburgh to smile slightly, for when that gentleman entered his office, Merwyn was awaiting him.

“I have only to tell you,” he said, in response to the young man’s questioning eyes, “that Miss Vosburgh accedes to your request as you presented it to me;” and in parting he gave his hand with some semblance of friendliness.