"THE IDEA!"
Mara was not the kind of girl that faints or goes into hysterics. The spirit of her father was aroused to the last degree. She felt that she had been arraigned and condemned by one who had no right to do either; that all the cherished traditions of her life had been trampled upon; that her father's loved companion-in-arms, and her dear friend, had been insulted. Even wise, saintly Mrs. Bodine, her genial counsellor, had been ignored. "Was there ever such monstrous assumption!" she cried, as she paced back and forth with clinched hands.
She soon heard the step of Mrs. Hunter, and became outwardly calm.
"Well?" said her aunt.
"He won't come again, nor shall I speak to him again. Let these facts content you, aunty."
"That much at least is satisfactory," said Mrs. Hunter, "but I think it was a wretched mistake to see him at all."
"It was not a mistake, for he has revealed the depths into which a man can sink who adopts his course. I have some respect for an out-and-out Northerner, brought up as such; but it does seem that when a man turns traitor, as it were, he goes to greater lengths than those whose camp he joins. He suspects those who are too noble for him to understand."
"Whom does Mr. Clancy suspect?"
"Oh, all of us. He came to advise me as an unprotected, unfriended, unguided girl."
"Was there ever such impudence on the face of the earth!"