"That must be settled hereafter. My health, and consequently my state of feeling, is very uncertain. Sometimes even music jars on me. Anna shall see you and arrange it."
Mrs. Singleton, hearing her name, turned from a conversation which she had been maintaining with the gentleman who was the other occupant of the room.
"What is it that I am to arrange?" she asked. "That Miss Lynde will come sometime and sing to us alone? Oh, that will be charming! But now I must go back to my duties, for I think I hear the sonata ending. Will you come with me?" she said to Marion.
"If my audience is ended," replied Marion, with a pretty smile, to Mr. Singleton.
"Your audience is not ended, if you do not mind remaining with an old man for a little while," he answered. "Anna can return or send for you when she wants you to entertain her guests again. Meanwhile I want you to entertain me."
"Before I go, then, I will introduce General Butler, and charge him to bring you back presently," said Mrs. Singleton, after which she disappeared.
General Butler, no less pleased than his friend with the charm of a beautiful face, sat down again, and said to Marion: "Your name is very familiar to me, Miss Lynde. I wonder if you are not a daughter of Herbert Lynde, who was killed at Seven Pines?"
"Yes," answered Marion, "I am his daughter, and always glad to meet his old friends. You knew him, then?"
"Oh! very well. He was in my brigade, and one of the bravest men I ever saw. I thought there was something familiar to me in your face as well as in your name. You are very like him."
"Herbert Lynde!" repeated Mr. Singleton. "If that was your father's name, my niece was right in thinking that there might be some relationship between us. The Singletons and those Lyndes have intermarried more than once. I hope that you do not object to acknowledging a distant link of cousinship with us?"