sonally affect
him. They never spoke of him, and March was too proud to ask either
Fulkerson or Conrad whether the old man knew that Lindau had returned
his money. He avoided talking to Conrad, from a feeling that if he did
he should involuntarily lead him on to speak of his differences with his
father. Between himself and Fulkerson, even, he was uneasily aware of
a want of their old perfect friendliness. Fulkerson had finally behaved
with honor and courage; but his provisional reluctance had given March
the measure of Fulkerson's character in one direction, and he could not
ignore the fact that it was smaller than he could have wished.

He could not make out whether Fulkerson shared his discomfort or not.
It certainly wore away, even with March, as time passed, and with
Fulkerson, in the bliss of his fortunate love, it was probably far
more transient, if it existed at all. He advanced into the winter as
radiantly as if to meet the spring, and he said that if there were any
pleasanter month of the year than November, it was December, especially
when the weather was good and wet and muddy most of the time, so that
you had to keep indoors a long while after you called anywhere.

Colonel Woodburn had the anxiety, in view of his daughter's engagement,
when she asked his consent to it, that such a dreamer must have in
regard to any reality that threatens to affect the course of his
reveries. He had not perhaps taken her marriage into account, except
as a remote contingency; and certainly Fulkerson was not the kind of
son-in-law that he had imagined in dealing with that abstraction. But
because he had nothing of the sort definitely in mind, he could not
oppose the selection of Fulkerson with success; he really knew nothing
against him, and he knew, many things in his favor; Fulkerson inspired
him with the liking that every one felt for him in a measure; he amused
him, he cheered him; and the colonel had been so much used to leaving
action of all kinds to his daughter that when he came to close quarters
with the question of a son-in-law he felt helpless to decide it, and
he let her decide it, as if it were still to be decided when it was
submitted to him. She was competent to treat it in all its phases:
not merely those of personal interest, but those of duty to the broken
Southern past, sentimentally dear to him, and practically absurd to her.
No such South as he remembered had ever existed to her knowledge, and
no such civi