"Yes; when the fighting is over for the night I'll bring the latest news. There, the men are falling in for their march up Broadway, and I must go." "Well, I congratulate you. No soldier ever won greener laurels in so short a time. What's more, you were cool enough to be one of the most effective of the force. I saw you picking off the leaders. Good-by;" and he hastened away, while Merwyn followed Carpenter and the captured flag to a new scene of battle. CHAPTER XLVI. "I HAVE SEEN THAT YOU DETEST ME." After her father had left her on that eventful afternoon, Marian felt as if alone in a beleaguered fortress. The familiar streets in which she had trundled her hoop as a child, and until to-day walked without fear, were now filled with nameless terrors. She who had been so bent on going out in the morning would now as readily stroll in a tiger-infested jungle as to venture from her door. When men like her father used such language and took such precautions as she had anxiously noted, she knew that dangers were manifold and great, that she was in the midst of the most ruthless phase of war. But her first excitement had passed, and it had brought her such lessons that now her chief thought was to retrieve herself. The one who had dwelt in her mind as so weak and unmanly as to be a constant cause of irritation had shown himself to be her superior, and might even equal the friends with whom she had been scornfully contrasting him. That she should have spoken to him and treated him as she had done produced boundless self-reproach, while her egregious error in estimating his character was humiliating in the last degree. "Fool! fool!" she said, aloud, "where was your woman's intuition?" Marian had much warm blood in her veins and fire in her spirit, and on provocation could become deeply incensed at others, as we have seen; but so devoid of petty vanity was she that she could be almost equally angry at herself. She did not share her father's confidence that Merwyn would relent under a few smiles, for she knew how deeply she had wounded and wronged him, and she believed that he possessed a will as steadfast as fate. The desire to test her father's theory, the hope to atone for her wrong judgment, grew so strong and absorbing as to make the awful fact of the riot secondary in her thoughts. To get through the hours she felt that she must keep incessantly busy. She first went to her own room, packed valuables and jewels in a convenient form to carry if there should be cause for a hasty exit, then concealed them. Going to her mother's and father's room, she acted in view of the same possible necessity, all the while carrying on the distinct process of thought in regard to Merwyn, dwelling on their past relations, but above all questioning his course when they should meet again.