Not only quick-witted Ella, but also Mrs. Bodine and Mrs. Hunter, saw the drift of affairs, and gave their unhesitating approval. Mrs. Hunter was glad, because it would destroy Clancy's prospects forever, and prove a sort of triumph over him. Then it was, as she assured Mara one day, "eminently fitting. Your father and mother would both approve."
"That thought comes to me, too," calmly rejoined the girl. "I hope they will—I think they will. But let us not talk further till all is settled."
Mrs. Bodine believed the marriage would result well on other grounds. "Cousin Hugh," she said one day when they were alone, "you may shut me up if I am meddling, but you are not thinking of Mara in the same way that you did in the spring."
"I admit it, Cousin Sophy, and you need not shut up."
"Well, I reckon it will come about. On general principles I don't approve of such marriages, but I suppose there are exceptions to most rules. As I have said to you before, Mara is as old in her feelings as you are, and I think you will be happier together than you would be apart. I never understood Mara altogether; but of one thing I am certain, she must have some strong motive, something or some person for whom she can sacrifice herself; and, being a woman, she would have a good deal better time sacrificing herself to a man than to anything else;" and the old lady chirped her little complacent laugh.
"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.