uch pure and womanly
feeling to view the marriage tie through anything so worldly as the
mere advantages of station. The passing emotion was a thrill produced by
factitious habits, while the more settled opinion which remained was the
offspring of nature and principles.

"I know no officer in the 55th, or any other regiment, who would be
likely to do so foolish a thing; nor do I think I myself would do so
foolish a thing as to marry an officer."

"Foolish, Mabel!"

"Yes, foolish, Jasper. You know, as well as I can know, what the world
would think of such matters; and I should be sorry, very sorry, to find
that my husband ever regretted that he had so far yielded to a fancy for
a face or a figure as to have married the daughter of one so much his
inferior as a sergeant."

"_Your_ husband, Mabel, will not be so likely to think of the father as
to think of the daughter."

The girl was talking with spirit, though feeling evidently entered into
her part of the discourse; but she paused for nearly a minute after
Jasper had made the last observation before she uttered another word.
Then she continued, in a manner less playful, and one critically
attentive might have fancied in a manner slightly melancholy,--

"Parent and child ought so to live as not to have two hearts, or two
modes of feeling and thinking. A common interest in all things I should
think as necessary to happiness in man and wife, as between the other
members of the same family. Most of all, ought neither the man nor the
woman to have any unusual cause for unhappiness, the world furnishing so
many of itself."

"Am I to understand, then, Mabel, you would refuse to marry an officer,
merely because he was an officer?"

"Have you a right to ask such a question, Jasper?" said Mabel smiling.

"No other right than what a strong desire to see you happy can give,
which, after all, may be very little. My anxiety has been increased,
from happening to know that it is your father's intention to persuade
you to marry Lieutenant Muir."

"My dear, dear father can entertain no notion so ridiculous--no notion
so cruel!"

"Would it, then, be cruel to wish you the wife of a quartermaster?"

"I have told you what I think on that subject, and cannot make my words
stronger. Having answered you so frankly, Jasper, I have a right to ask
how you know that my father thinks of any such thing?"

"That he has chosen a husband for you, I know from his own mouth; for
he has to