s loyalty to be made of less stern materials than their own.
Her mother was the first to perceive that the modest maiden awaited the
coming of the young soldier with a more anxious forethought than
betokened an unoccupied heart. How painfully did this perception break
upon her! It opened upon her view a foresight of that unhappy sequence
of events that attends the secret struggle between parental authority
and filial inclination, when the absorbing interests of true love are
concerned: a struggle that so frequently darkens the fate of the noblest
natures, and whose history supplies the charm of so many a melancholy
and thrilling page. Mrs. Lindsay had an invincible objection to the
contemplated alliance, and immediately awakened the attention of her
husband to the subject. From this moment Butler's reception at the Dove
Cote was cold and formal, and Mr. Lindsay did not delay to express to
his daughter a marked aversion to her intimacy with a man so uncongenial
to his own taste. I need not dwell upon the succession of incidents that
followed: are they not written in every book that tells of young hearts
loving in despite of authority? Let it suffice to say that Butler, "many
a time and oft," hied stealthily and with a lover's haste to the Dove
Cote, where, "under the shade of melancholy boughs," or sometimes of
good Mistress Dimock's roof, he found means to meet and exchange vows of
constancy with the lady of his love.

Thus passed the first year of the war. The death of Mrs. Lindsay, to
which I have before adverted, now occurred. The year of mourning was
doubly afflictive to Mildred. Her father's grief hung as heavily upon
her as her own, and to this was added a total separation from Butler. He
had joined his regiment and was sharing the perils of the northern
campaigns, and subsequently of those which ended in the subjugation of
Carolina and Georgia. During all this period he was enabled to keep up
an uncertain and irregular correspondence with Mildred, and he had once
met her in secret, for a few hours only, at Mistress Dimock's, during
the autumn immediately preceding the date of the opening of my story.

Mrs. Lindsay, upon her death-bed, had spoken to her husband in the most
emphatic terms of admonition against Mildred's possible alliance with
Butler, and conjured him to prevent it by whatever means might be in his
power. Besides this, she made a will directing the distribution of a
large jointure estate in England