ot have concealed a
single one of his interviews with herself. She liked him; she was
delighted to think that he liked her; they were happy in each other's
company--what more did she need for present happiness, and what harm if
others knew that she was happy?

Neither had her father any of the misgivings so common and so hateful in
meticulous old men. He was a loyal, frank character. He had unbounded
confidence in his daughter, and his absorbing love for her made him
rejoice in the present little episode as a bright spot amid the
gathering gloom of war. He had taken a fancy to Cary from the first. He
relished his conversation. He appreciated his attentions to Zulma with
the proud consciousness that she fully deserved them. Apart altogether
from political consideration, into which he never entered, and which the
young officer had the delicacy never to approach, he was pleased to
judge for himself of the men who came to invade his country in the
sacred name of liberty, and of extending the hospitality of his house to
a representative among them, as proof that he too was a friend of
humanity and chose to regard the impending war only from the standpoint
of right.

Fortunately, however, for all concerned, it so happened that the visits
of Cary were known to very few of those who habitually went to the Sarpy
mansion. The daily beggar hobbled up as usual, with his basket under his
arm, or meal bag slung across his shoulder, to gather the abundant
crumbs of the table, but he never penetrated beyond the kitchen. The
poor widow of the neighborhood appeared regularly for the broken
victuals that were almost the sole sustenance of her brood of little
orphans, but she was a model woman of her class, not given to gossip and
so devoted to her benefactors that she would repeat nothing likely to
satisfy the vulgar curiosity of outsiders. The farmers and villagers, of
Pointe-aux-Trembles were kept so busy providing food and lodgings for
the army, or were so deterred from moving about by the sight of the
patrols along the roads, that almost none of them called at the mansion
during the whole period of occupation.

And so passed the fortnight away. It was all too short considered by the
number of days. The mornings rose and the twilights came with a calm
remorseless rapidity that had no regard for the calculations of the
heart, but when the recapitulation was made, it was found that a mighty
distance had been travelled, and that the va