"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.
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