red the other ladies and enjoyed conversing with them and with Mr.
Dinsmore, he was quite conscious of a constant uneasiness and discontent
when Violet absented herself from the room.

His admiration for her beauty and grace had been unbounded from the first,
and gradually as he discovered more and more of her sterling worth, her
sweetness and unselfishness of disposition, her talent, industry, and
genuine piety, his heart had gone out to her in ardent affection; in fact
with a deeper and stronger love than he had ever before known or dreamed
of.

He began to ask himself how he could ever go away and leave her, and
whether he dared seek to make her his own. He was fully as loath as Donald
Keith to appear in the role of fortune-hunter. Would Mr. Dinsmore and his
daughter, so noble themselves, be ready to impute so unworthy a motive to
him? He hoped not, he believed they would judge him by themselves. And
they who so fully knew and appreciated all that Violet was must see and
believe that no man whose affections were not already engaged could be
thrown into intimate association with her day after day, as he had been
for so many weeks, and not learn to love her for herself alone.

Then he had learned incidentally from Dr. Conly, that the older daughter
had married a poor artist with the full consent of her parents and
grandfather, his lack of wealth being considered no objection to his suit.

Captain Raymond did not look upon wealth as the highest patent of nobility
even in this republican country, but thought, in his manly independence,
that his well-established reputation as an honorable, Christian gentleman,
and officer of the United States Navy, made him in rank fully the peer of
the Dinsmores and Travillas; and he believed that they would entirely
agree with him in that.

But he was not a conceited man, and felt by no means sure that Violet
herself would give a favorable hearing to his suit. Under the peculiar and
trying circumstances of his sojourn at Ion he had not been able to offer
her any attention, and her uniform kindness had probably been shown only
to her mother's invalid guest. And as he thought of the disparity of years
between them, and how many younger, and perhaps in every way more
attractive men, must have crossed her path, his hopes sank very low.

Yet he was not too proud to allow her the opportunity to reject him.
Saying to himself, "Were I certain that she is indifferent to me, I would
not give