The general had often noticed the eager, attentive little face at the table, and had been attracted by its bright intelligence. Mary Lee blinked up with red, tear-swollen eyes into the fatherly old face with its crown of white hair, and recognised the stamp of the true knight in every aristocratic feature. With a sudden, instinctive feeling of confidence she cried out: "You are not like the rest. You would understand, and I must tell somebody."
It was a pitiful little tale that she poured out to her sympathetic listener, revealing a sweet, unspoiled nature as she laid bare her fond girlish hopes and longings, in a way that would have surprised her had she realised what she was doing. It gave him an insight into her home life, too, and when she had finished, he could appreciate what a cruel wound had been given her sensitive heart by the words which disparaged her father. For a minute after she stopped speaking, the general sat quite still. Then he said:
"Will you take the advice of an old man who has lived a long time and learned a great many lessons? Don't go home to-morrow, as it is your first impulse to do. Be brave and unselfish enough not to say anything to your friend that will mar her enjoyment." He broke off suddenly and sat musing a minute. "Do you know Browning's 'Saul'?" he asked, after a little pause. Mary Lee nodded, a gleam of pleasure lighting her eyes for an instant.
"Then you will remember these lines:
"'Round me the sheep
Fed in silence—above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep;
And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie
'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the sky.'
"Now these girls who have hurt you so cruelly, have done it solely through ignorance. They have never seen anything beyond their own little strip ''twixt the hill and the sky,' and they can only follow a leader like a flock of pretty sheep. It is true that they ought to have a broader horizon than the boundary of the little social circle in which they were born, but you must make allowances for them, my child. From their cradles they have been hedged round with conventionalities which have made them short-sighted. It is your privilege to rise above the petty social hollows of life. Learn to take an eagle view, my dear. What does the eagle care for the happenings down in the hollows?
"'With wing on the wind, and eye on the sun,
He swerves not a line, but bears onward—right on!'
That is a true American motto, learned from our national emblem.
"It is absolute foolishness for us to prate of old-world castes when it is a part of our national creed that any one among us may rise as high as the best of us, provided he can grow the wings wherewith to soar. That little speech which almost broke your heart is a part of our creed, too. 'The hand of Douglas is his own.' The American Douglas reserves the right to extend it, regardless of all arbitrary social lines, to any palm that has proved itself worthy, no matter how hard and toil-stained it may be. Only snobbishness refuses."
There was a long pause, while Mary Lee considered the old general's little sermon, and he watched her, with a kindly twinkle in his eyes.