re eyes, she was eminently calculated to
shatter what poor remnant of peace of mind the young ensign and two
young lieutenants who clustered about her had been able to keep in this
desert place--the more precarious since it was well understood that the
fair Belinda had high expectations, and as to matrimonial bait hoped for
the opportunity to "bob for whale." This gay exile herself, born and
reared in the provinces and surrounded always by the little court her
beauty summoned about her, did not look forward to a life on the
frontier. She anticipated at some time an invasion of England and a life
worthy the brilliance of her aspect, and occasionally when her
interlocutors were such as could attribute to her no braggart pride, she
would mention that she had relatives there--of good quality--who would
doubtless be glad to receive her. The mother, poor sad-visaged martyr of
deceit, would only draw her thin wrinkled collapsed lips the closer,
holding hard hidden the fact that the girl's father had been looked upon
by these relatives "of good quality" as a monster of ingratitude, and at
the same time as a candidate for a strait waist-coat, whose apostasy and
voluntary exile had hastened the good bishop's old age and broken his
heart; that the children of the ingrate would be avoided by this
conventional clique, like the leprosy, and esteemed sure to develop
sooner or later terrible and infinitely inconvenient heresies, and
occasion heaven only knew what bouleversement in any comely and orthodox
and reasonable method of life. She had not much vigor of sentiment, but
such flicker of hatred as could burn among the ashes of her nature
glowed toward those who had cut her husband off and ostracized him, and
made of his earnest sacrificial effort to do his duty, as it was
revealed to him, a scoff, a burlesque, a reproach, and a bitter
caricature. She knew, too, how much of money, of dress, and of
connections it would require to return to that country where they would
have no base from which to organize the brave campaign that the
brilliantly equipped daughter contemplated with such gay and confident
courage.

The girl's brother, however, Hamilton Rush, five years her senior,
forgetting that he was the grandson of a prelate and the son of a martyr
by election, bent all the energies he had inherited from both in the
effort to build up home and wealth and a fair future in this rich land,
which held out such bounties to the strong hand