"Well, I reckon it will come about. On general principles I don't approve of such marriages, but I suppose there are exceptions to most rules. As I have said to you before, Mara is as old in her feelings as you are, and I think you will be happier together than you would be apart. I never understood Mara altogether; but of one thing I am certain, she must have some strong motive, something or some person for whom she can sacrifice herself; and, being a woman, she would have a good deal better time sacrificing herself to a man than to anything else;" and the old lady chirped her little complacent laugh. "Rest assured," said the veteran, "I don't want any self-sacrifice in Mara's case." "Of course not; nor do I. I wouldn't approve of any actual self-sacrifice, but Mara will try to come as near it as she can. I reckon she'd be more drawn toward a cripple like you than the handsomest young fellow in town, on general principles; and then she has been interested in you from the first, because you, in a peculiar sense, represent to her the past, which has been almost her only inheritance." "I confess that I have indulged in the same thoughts which you express. God grant that we both are right! She has become strangely dear to me. Once I could never have imagined it at my time of life." "Oh, the heart needn't grow old," was the laughing reply. The captain's outlook was rendered more favorable by the reception of a note which contained the offer of a better position than that held in the employ of the detested Mr. Houghton. When he investigated the matter he learned that the offer came largely through the influence of Clancy, and this last confirmed the veteran's impression that the young man was using his influence and prosperity for the benefit of the South. To Mara it was a bitter ordeal to listen to Bodine's complacent explanation of the affair, and she was glad that she was told in the dusky twilight, which concealed an expression of pain even beyond her control. Words of passionate protest rose to her very lips, but she remembered in time that they would involve revelations which would thwart her purpose to make him happy at every cost to herself. If he ever learned what Clancy had been to her, what he was at this agonized moment, her vocation, if not gone, would be impaired beyond remedy. Afterward, in the solitude of her own room, she accepted this bitter experience, as she had resolved to accept all others, as a part of her lot. In her morbidness she became Jesuitical. Her father's old friend should be made as happy as it was in her power to render him. Whatever interfered with this purpose should be concealed or trampled upon. Of Clancy she said bitterly, "If he thinks he has been magnanimous, how little he understands me." Clancy's motives had been somewhat mixed. He was willing that her pride should be rebuked and wounded, and he also wished her to know that he was above the petty resentment of jealousy.