"No, my dear; at the worst you have been misled by generous and loyal impulses. Your deep sympathy with recent events has made you morbid, and therefore unfair. To your mind Mr. Merwyn represented the half-hearted element that shuns meeting what must be met at every cost. If this were true of him I should share in your spirit, but he appears to be trying to be loyal and to do what he can in the face of obstacles greater than many overcome." "I don't believe he will ever come near me again!" she exclaimed. "Then you are absolved in the future. Of course we can make no advances towards a man who has been your suitor." Merwyn's course promised to fulfil her fear,--she now acknowledged to herself that it was a fear,--for his visits ceased. She tried to dismiss him from her thoughts, but a sense of her unfairness and harshness haunted her. She did not see why she had not taken her father's view, or why she had thrown away her influence that accorded with the scheme of life to which she had pledged herself. The very restraint indicated by his words was a mystery, and mysteries are fascinating. She remembered, with compunction, that not even his own mother had sought to develop a true, manly spirit in him. "Now he is saying," she thought, bitterly, "that I, too, am a fanatic,--worse than his mother." Weeks passed and she heard nothing from him, nor did her father mention his name. While her regret was distinct and positive, it must not be supposed that it gave her serious trouble. Indeed, the letters of Mr. Lane, and the semi-humorous journal of Strahan and Blauvelt, together with the general claims of society and her interest in her father's deep anxieties, were fast banishing it from her mind, when, to her surprise, his card was handed to her one stormy afternoon, late in January. "I am sorry to intrude upon you, Miss Vosburgh," he began, as she appeared, "but--" "Why should you regard it as an intrusion, Mr. Merwyn?" "I think a lady has a right to regard any unwelcome society as an intrusion." "Admitting even so much, it does not follow that this is an intrusion," she said, laughing. Then she added, with slightly heightened color: "Mr. Merwyn, I must at least keep my own self-respect, and this requires an acknowledgment. I was rude to you when you last called. But I was morbid from anxiety and worry over what was happening. I had no right to grant your request to call upon me and then fail in courtesy." "Will you, then, permit me to renew my old request?" he asked, with an eagerness that he could not disguise. "Certainly not. That would imply such utter failure on my part! You should be able to forgive me one slip, remembering the circumstances." "You have the most to forgive," he replied, humbly. "I asked for little more than toleration, but I felt that I had not the right to force even this upon you."