“How have you succeeded?”

“I have prevented you, as a man of honor, from doing, under a gust of passion, what would spoil all my plans and hopes.”

“I am not a man.  You have done your best to prevent me from being one.  You have bound me with a chain, and made me like one of the slaves on your plantation.  Your plans and hopes?  Have I no right to plans and hopes?”

“You know my first thought has been of you and for you.”

“No, I do not know this.  I now remember that, when you bound me, a thoughtless, selfish, indolent boy, you said that you would have torn your heart out rather than marry my father had you foreseen what was coming.  This miserable egotist, Jeff Davis, and his scheme of empire, cost what it may, are more to you than husband or child.  A mother would have said:  ’You have reached manhood and have the rights of a man.  I will advise you and seek to guide you.  You know my feelings and views, and in their behalf I will even entreat you; but you have reached that age when the law makes you free, and holds you accountable to your own conscience.’  Of what value is my life if it is not mine?  I should have the right to make my own life, like others.”

“You have the right to make it, but not to mar it.”

“In other words, your prejudices, your fanaticism, are to take the place of my conscience and reason.  You expect me to carry a sham of manhood out into the world.  I wish you to release me from my oath.”

“Never,” cried Mrs. Merwyn, with a passion now equal to his own.  “You have fallen into the hands of a Delilah, and she has shorn you of your manhood.  Infatuated with a nameless Northern girl, you would blight your life and mine.  When you come to your senses you will thank me on your knees that I interposed an oath that cannot be broken between you and suicidal folly;” and she was about to leave the room.

“Stop,” he said, huskily.  “When I bound myself I did so without realizing what I did.  I was but a boy, knowing not the future.  I did it out of mere good-will to you, little dreaming of the fetters you were forging.  Since you will not release me and treat me as a man I shall keep the oath.  I swore never to put on the uniform of a Union soldier, or to step on Southern soil with a hostile purpose, but you have taught me to detest your Confederacy with implacable hate; and I shall use my means, my influence, all that I am, to aid others to destroy it.”

“What! are you not going back to England with us?”

“Yes.”

“Before you have been there a week this insane mood will pass away.”

“Did my father’s moods pass away?”

“Your father—­” began the lady, impetuously, and then hesitated.

“My father always yielded you your just rights and maintained his own.  I shall imitate his example as far as I now may.  The oath is a thing that stands by itself.  It will probably spoil my life, but I cannot release myself from it.”