At that very hour Merwyn sat alone in his elegant home, his face buried in his hands, the very picture of dejection.  Before him on the table lay the journal from which he had read the same words which Marian had applied to him in bitter scorn.  An open letter was also upon the table, and its contents had slain his hope.  Mrs. Merwyn had answered his appeal characteristically.  “You evidently need my presence,” she wrote, “yet I will never believe that you can violate your oath, unless your reason is dethroned.  When you forget that you have sworn by your father’s memory and your mother’s honor, you must be wrecked indeed.  I wonder at your blindness to your own interests, and can see in it the influence which, in all the past, has made some weak men reckless and forgetful of everything except an unworthy passion.  The armies of your Northern friends have been defeated again and again.  I have means of communication with my Southern friends, and before the summer is over our gallant leaders will dictate peace in the city where you dwell.  What then would become of the property which you so value, were it not for my influence?  My hope still is, that your infatuation will pass away with your youth, and that your mind will become clear, so that you can appreciate the future that might be yours.  If I can only protect you against yourself and designing people, all may yet be well; and when our glorious South takes the foremost place among the nations of the earth, my influence will be such that I can still obtain for you rank and title, unless you now compromise yourself by some unutterable folly.  The crisis is approaching fast, and the North will soon learn that, so far from subduing the South, it will be subjugated and will gladly accept such terms as we may deem it best to give.  I have fulfilled my mission here.  The leading classes are with us in sympathy, and it will require but one or two more victories like that of Chancellorsville to make England our open ally.  Then people of our birth and wealth will be the equals of the English aristocracy, and your career can be as lofty as you choose to make it.  Then, with a gratitude beyond words, you will thank me for my firmness, for you can aspire to the highest positions in an empire such as the world has not seen before.”

“No,” said Merwyn, sternly, “if there is a free State left at the North, I will work there with my own hands for a livelihood, rather than have any part or lot in this Southern empire.  Yet what can I ever appear to be but a shrinking coward?  An owner of slaves all her life, my mother has made a slave of me.  She has fettered my very soul.  Oh! if there are to be outbreaks at the North, let them come soon, or I shall die under the weight of my chains.”

The dark tide of invasion rose higher and higher.  At last the tidings came that Lee’s whole army was in Pennsylvania, that Harrisburg would be attacked before night, and that the enemy were threatening Columbia on the northern bank of the Susquehanna, and would have crossed the immense bridge which there spans the river, had it not been burned.