Thus did Willard Merwyn misunderstand the girl he sought, so strong are inherited and perverted traits and lifelong mental habits. He knew how easily, with his birth and wealth, he could arrange a match abroad with the high contracting powers. Mrs. Vosburgh had impressed him as the chief potentate of her family, and not at all averse to his purpose. He had seen Mr. Vosburgh but once, and the quiet, reticent man had appeared to be a second-rate power. He had also learned that the property of the family was chiefly vested in the wife. Of course, if Mr. Vosburgh had been in the city, Merwyn would have addressed him first, but he was absent and the time of his return unknown.
The son knew his mother would be furious, but he had already discounted that opposition. He regarded this Southern-born lady as a very unsafe guide in these troublous times. Indeed, he cherished a practical kind of loyalty to her and his sisters.
"Only as I keep my head level," he said to himself, "are they safe. Mamma would identify herself with the South to-day if she could, and with a woman's lack of foresight be helpless on the morrow. Let her dream her dreams and nurse her prejudices. I am my father's son, and the responsible head of the family; and I part with no solid advantage until I receive a better one. I shall establish mamma and the girls comfortably in England, and then return to a city where I can soon double my wealth and live a life independent of every one."
This prospect grew to be so attractive that he indulged, like Mr. Lanniere, in King Cophetua's mood, and felt that one American girl was about to become distinguished indeed.
Watching his opportunity he called upon Mrs. Vosburgh while Marian was out of the way, formally asking her, in her husband's absence, for permission to pay his addresses; and he made known his financial resources and prospects with not a little complacent detail.
Mrs. Vosburgh was dignified and gracious, enlarged on her daughter's worth, hinted that she might be a little difficult to win by reason of the attentions she had received and her peculiar views, yet left, finally, the impression that so flattering proposals could not be slighted.
Merwyn went home with a sigh of relief. He would no longer approach Marian with doubtful and ill-defined intentions, which he believed chiefly accounted for the clever girl's coldness towards him.
CHAPTER XIV.
OMINOUS.
SUBORDINATE only to her father and two chief friends, in Marian's thoughts, was her enemy, for as such she now regarded Willard Merwyn. She had felt his attentions to be humiliating from the first. They had presented her former life, in which her own amusement and pleasure had been her chief thought, in another and a very disagreeable light. These facts alone would have been sufficient to awaken a vindictive feeling, for she was no saint. In addition, she bitterly resented his indifference to a cause made so dear by her father's devotion and her friends' brave self-sacrifice. Whatever his motive might be, she felt that he was cold-blooded, cowardly, or disloyal, and such courtesy as she showed him was due to little else than the hope of inflicting upon him some degree of humiliation. She had seen too many manifestations of honest interest and ardent love to credit him with any such emotion, and she had no scruples in wounding his pride to the utmost.