tely more agreeable, or less disagreeable, as the reader may
choose one or the other statement, than when she was always fretting
about her "responsibility." She even began to take an interest in some
of Myrtle's worldly experiences, and something like a smile would now and
then disarrange the chief-mourner stillness of her features, as Myrtle
would tell some lively story she had brought away from the gay society
she had frequented.

Cynthia Badlam kept her keen eyes on her like a hawk. Murray Bradshaw
was away, and here was this handsome and agreeable youth coming in to
poach on the preserve of which she considered herself the gamekeeper.
What did it mean? She had heard the story about Susan's being off with
her old love and on with a new one. Ah ha! this is the game, is it?

Clement Lindsay passed not so much a pleasant evening, as one of strange,
perplexed, and mingled delight and inward conflict. He had found his
marble once more turned to flesh and blood, and breathing before him.
This was the woman he was born for; her form was fit to model his
proudest ideal from, her eyes melted him when they rested for an instant
on his face,--her voice reached the hidden sensibilities of his inmost
nature; those which never betray their existence until the outward chord
to which they vibrate in response sends its message to stir them. But
was she not already pledged to that other,--that cold-blooded,
contriving, venal, cynical, selfish, polished, fascinating man of the
world, whose artful strategy would pass with nine women out of ten for
the most romantic devotion?

If he had known the impression he made, he would have felt less anxiety
with reference to this particular possibility. Miss Silence expressed
herself gratified with his appearance, and thought he looked like a good
young man,--he reminded her of a young friend of hers who--[It was the
same who had gone to one of the cannibal islands as a missionary,--and
stayed there.] Myrtle was very quiet. She had nothing to say about
Clement, except that she had met him at a party in the city, and found
him agreeable. Miss Cynthia wrote a letter to Murray Bradshaw that very
evening, telling him that he had better come back to Oxbow Village as
quickly as he could, unless he wished to find his place occupied by an
intruder.

In the mean time, the country was watching the garrison in Charleston
Harbor. All at once the first gun of the four years' cannonade hurled
its