which he could not readily yield, and which he sought to disguise by exaggerating his well-known characteristics.  People of his temperament often shrink from revealing their deeper feelings, believing that these would seem to others so incongruous as to call forth incredulous smiles.  Strahan was not a coward, except in the presence of ridicule.  This had more terrors for him than all the guns of the Confederacy; and he knew that every one, from his own family down, would laugh at the thought of his going to the war.  In a way that puzzled him a little he felt that he would not care so much if Marian Vosburgh did not laugh.  The battle of which he had read to-day had at last decided him; he must go; but if Marian would give him credit for a brave, manly impulse, and not think of him as a ludicrous spectacle when he donned the uniform, he would march away with a light heart.  He did not analyze her influence over him, but only knew that she had a peculiar fascination which it was not in his impressionable nature to resist.

Thus it may be seen that he only gave an example of the truth that great apparent changes are the result of causes that have long been secretly active.

Marian, like many others, did not sufficiently take this fact into account, and was on the qui vive for other remarkable manifestations.  They did not occur.  As her father had predicted, life, in its outward conditions, resumed its normal aspects.  Her mother laughed a little, sighed a little, when she heard the story of Mr. Lanniere’s final exit; the coquettish kitchen-maid continued her career with undisturbed complacency; and Marian to her own surprise found that, after the first days of her enthusiasm had passed, it required the exertion of no little will-power to refrain from her old motives and tactics.  But she was loyal to herself and to her implied promise to her father.  She knew that he was watching her,—­that he had set his heart on the development, in a natural way, of her best traits.  She also knew that if she faltered she must face his disappointment and her own contempt.

She had a horror, however, of putting on what she called “goody-goody airs,” and under the influence of this feeling acted much like her old self.  Not one of her callers could have charged her with manifesting a certain kind of misleading favor, but her little salon appeared as free from restraint as ever, and her manner as genial and lively.  It began to be observed by some, however, that while she participated unhesitatingly in the light talk of others, she herself would occasionally broach topics of more weight, especially such as related to the progress of the war; and more than once she gave such direction to her conversation with the artist as made his eyes kindle.

Her father was satisfied.  He usually came home late on Saturday, and some of her gentleman friends who were in the habit of dropping in of a Sunday evening, were soon taught that these hours were engaged.