“Hugh, I love you now, I will be your wife.” But propriety had held her back and made her far more reserved towards him than she had ever been before. Terribly jealous where she was concerned, Hugh was quick to notice the change, and the gloomy shadow on his face was not caused wholly by ’Lina’s sad death, as many had supposed. Hugh was very unhappy. Instead of learning to love him, as he had sometimes hoped she might, Alice had come to dislike him, shunning his society, and always making some pretense to get away if by chance they were left alone, or if compelled to talk with him, chatting rapidly on the most indifferent topics. She never would love him, Hugh thought, and feeling that the sooner he left home the better, he had decided to start at once in quest of Adah. This decision he had not yet communicated to his mother, but as the closing of Irving Stanley’s letter seemed to open the way, he rather abruptly announced his intention of going immediately to New York. He did not however add that failing to find his sister, he might possibly join the Federal Army. Ever since he had had time to think clearly upon the subject then agitating the public mind, Hugh had felt an intense desire to enroll himself with the patriotic men who would not sit idly down while their country was laying her dishonored head low in the dust. A Unionist to the heart’s core, he had already won some notoriety by his bitter denunciations against those men who, with Harney at their head, were advocating secession from the union. But his first duty was to Adah, and so he only talked of her and the probabilities of his finding her. He should start to-morrow, if possible, he said. He had made his arrangements to do so, and there was no longer an excuse for tarrying. They would get on well enough without him; they would not miss him much, and he stole a glance at Alice, who, fearful lest she might betray herself, framed some excuse for leaving her seat upon the piazza, and stole up to her room where she could be alone, to think how desolate Spring Bank would be when Hugh was really gone.