But there might be found a remedy to this lesser evil.
General Lyon had a younger brother, Chief Justice Lyon, of Richmond. And the chief justice had an only son.
Young Alexander Lyon was a bright, handsome, attractive lad, a few years older than his cousin Anna.
Under all the circumstances, if it was not perfectly proper, it was at least natural and pardonable that old General Lyon should wish his grand-daughter to become the wife of his nephew, so that while she inherited his estate, she might perpetuate his name.
Quite early in the childhood of the boy and girl, the general proposed their betrothal to the chief justice, who eagerly acceded to the plan. And so the affair was settled—by the parents. It was not considered necessary to consult the children.
Alexander was sent to Yale College, where, for a few years, he led rather a fast life for a student.
And Anna was placed at a fashionable boarding school in New York, where she had a great deal more liberty than was good for her.
Twice a year the young persons were permitted to meet—when they spent the midsummer vacation at old Lyon Hall, where the chief justice and his wife also came on a visit to the general, and when they kept the Christmas holidays at the splendid town house of the chief justice at Richmond, where the general also went to pay back his brother’s visit. This arrangement was of course very agreeable to all parties.
But as the boy and girl grew towards manhood and womanhood, it was thought well to change this routine. And so, sometimes in the midsummer vacation, the whole party, consisting of both families, would go for a tour through the most attractive places of summer resort. And at Christmas they would keep the holidays in Washington.
On all these occasions the young lady and gentleman, under the auspices of their elders, entered very freely into the fashionable amusements of the season, with the understanding, however, that they were not to fall in love, or even to flirt with any one but each other.