“No, Miss Marian.  To me it is a sacred thing.  I want you to know that you have a brother’s hand and heart at your disposal.”

“I believe you.  Come,” she added, rising and dashing away her tears, “I must be brave, as you are.  Promise me that you will take no risks beyond those required by duty, and that you will write to me.”

“Marian,” he said, in a low, deep voice, “I shall ever try to do what, in your heart, you would wish.  You must also promise that if you are ever in trouble you will let me know.”

“I promise.”

He again kissed her hand, like a knight of the olden time.

At the last turn of the road from which he was visible she waved her handkerchief, then sought her room and burst into a passion of tears.

“Oh,” she sobbed, “as I now feel I could not refuse him anything.  I may never see him again, and he has been so kind and generous!”

The poor girl was indeed morbid from excitement and anxiety.  Her pale face began to give evidence of the strain which the times imposed on her in common with all those whose hearts had much at stake in the conflict.

In vain her mother remonstrated with her, and told her that she was “meeting trouble half-way.”  Once the sagacious lady had ventured to suggest that much uncertainty might be taken out of the future by giving more encouragement to Mr. Merwyn.  “I am told that he is almost a millionnaire in his own right,” she said.

“What is he in his own heart and soul?” had been the girl’s indignant answer.  “Don’t speak to me in that way again, mamma.”

Meanwhile Merwyn was a close observer of all that was taking place, and was coming to what he regarded as an heroic resolution.  Except as circumstances evoked an outburst of passion, he yielded to habit, and coolly kept his eye on the main chances of his life, and these meant what he craved most.

Two influences had been at work upon his mind during the summer.  One resulted from his independent possession of large property.  He had readily comprehended the hints thrown out by his lawyer that, if he remained in New York, the times gave opportunity for a rapid increase in his property, and the thought of achieving large wealth for himself, as his father had done before him, was growing in attractiveness.  His indolent nature began to respond to vital American life, and he asked himself whether fortune-making in his own land did not promise more than fortune-seeking among English heiresses; moreover, he saw that his mother’s devotion to the South increased daily, and that feeling at the North was running higher and becoming more and more sharply defined.  As a business man in New York his property would be safe beyond a doubt, but if he were absent and affiliating with those known to be hostile to the North, dangerous complications might arise.