“Please don’t praise me any more.  I can’t stand it,” faltered the girl, tearfully.  A moment later her laugh rang out.  “Hurrah!” she cried, “since Mr. Merwyn won’t go to the war, I’m going myself.”

“To make more wounds than you will heal,” her father added.  “Remember the circumstances under which you go will have to receive very careful consideration, and I shall have to know all about the matron and nurses with whom you act.  Your mother will be horrified, and so will not a few of your acquaintances.  Flirting in shadows is proper enough, but helping wounded soldiers to live—­But we understand each other, and I can trust you now.”

The next morning father and daughter parted with few misgivings, and the latter promised to go to her mother in a day or two, Mr. Vosburgh adding that if the week passed quietly he could join them on Saturday evening.

So they quietly exchanged their good-by kiss on the edge of a volcano already in eruption.

An early horseback ride in Central Park had become one of Merwyn’s habits of late.  At that hour he met comparatively few abroad, and the desire for solitude was growing upon him.  Like Mr. Vosburgh, he had watched with solicitude the beginning of the draft, feeling that if it passed quietly his only remaining chance would be to wring from his mother some form of release from his oath.  Indeed, so unhappy and desperate was he becoming that he had thought of revealing everything to Mr. Vosburgh.  The government officer, however, might feel it his duty to use the knowledge, should there come a time when the authorities proceeded against the property of the disloyal.  Moreover, the young man felt that it would be dishonorable to reveal the secret.

Beyond his loyal impulses he now had little motive for effort.  Marian’s prejudices against him had become too deeply rooted, and her woman’s honor for the knightly men her friends had proved too controlling a principle, ever to give him a chance for anything better than polite tolerance.  He had discovered what this meant so fully, and in Blauvelt’s story had been shown the inevitable contrast which she must draw so vividly, that he had decided:—­

“No more of Marian Vosburgh’s society until all is changed.  Therefore no more forever, probably.  If my mother proves as obdurate as a Southern jailer, I suppose I’m held, although I begin to think I have as good cause to break my chains as any other Union man.  She tricked me into captivity, and holds me remorselessly,—­not like a mother.  Miss Vosburgh did show she had a woman’s heart, and would have given me her hand in friendship had I not been compelled to make her believe that I was a coward.  If in some way I can escape my oath, and my reckless courage at the front proves her mistaken, I may return to her.  Otherwise it is a useless humiliation and pain to see her any more.”

Such had been the nature of his musings throughout the long Sunday whose quiet had led to the belief that the draft would scarcely create a ripple of overt hostility.  During his ride on Monday morning he nearly concluded to go to his country place again.  He was growing nervous and restless, and he longed for the steadying influence of his mountain rambles before meeting his mother and deciding questions which would involve all their future relations.