One day, near the end of July, Ella, her father, Mrs. Hunter and Mara, were on the Battery, sitting beneath the shade of a live oak. The raised promenade, overlooking the water, was not far away, and among the passers-by Mara saw Clancy and Miss Ainsley approaching. Apparently they were absorbed in each other, but, when opposite, Clancy turned and looked her full in the face. She gave no sign of recognition nor did he. That mutual and unobserved encounter of their eyes set its seal on their last interview. They were strangers. "There goes a pair, billing and cooing," said Ella with a laugh. "Mara, don't you feel well?" asked the captain anxiously. "You look very pale." "I felt the heat very much to-day," she replied evasively. "I am longing for August and rest." "Oh, Mara! let us shut up shop at once," cried Ella. "Papa is at leisure now and we can make little expeditions down the bay, out to Summerville and elsewhere." "No," Mara replied, "I would rather do just what we agreed upon. It's only a few days now." "You are as sot as the everlasting hills." Mara was silent, and glad indeed that her quiet face gave no hint of the tumult in her heart. Mrs. Hunter's eyes were angrily following Clancy and Miss Ainsley. "Well," she said, with a scornful laugh, "that renegade Southerner has found his proper match in that Yankee coquette. I doubt whether he gets her though, if a man ever does get a born flirt. When she's through with Charleston she'll be through with him, if all I hear of her is true." "Oh, you're mistaken, Mrs. Hunter," Ella answered. "She fairly dotes on him, and if he don't marry her he's a worse flirt than she is. Think of Mr. Clancy's blue blood. She undoubtedly appreciates that." "I'm inclined to think that he was a changeling, and that old Colonel Clancy's child was spirited away." "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Hunter, but I differ with you. While I cannot share in many of Mr. Clancy's views and affiliations, he has the reputation of being sincere and straightforward. Even his enemies must admit that he seeks to make his friendliness to the North conducive to Southern interests." Mara's heart smote her that even Captain Bodine had been fairer to Clancy than she had been. Words rose to Ella's lips, but she repressed them, and soon afterward they returned to their respective homes. Mara early retired to the solitude of her own room, for that cold mutual glance on the Battery had suggested a new thought not yet entertained. In her mental excitement it promised to banish the dreary stagnation of her life. She must have a motive, and if it involved the very self-sacrifice that she had been warned against, so much the better. "It would teach Owen Clancy how futile were his words," she said to herself. "It would bring happiness to my father's friend; it would become a powerful incentive in my own life, and, above all, would compel me to banish the thought of one to whom I have said I will never speak again."