"And I am sorry for it all the while, night and day, in my prayers and in my dreams," answered Elsie Brand, with a sigh. "Hark!" as the tap of the drum came across from the lateral road before-mentioned. "There is another reminder of the curse, and one that comes nearer home. Do you remember, Margaret, that I shall soon have a brother, and you a lover, separated from us and in terrible danger? They say Harrisburgh must be taken, unless a very large body of troops can reach it at once. The Reserves will probably go on, to-night, and Carlton will probably accept his old commission again. I do want him to do his duty, Margaret, if it is his duty; but I hope that he will not think so—that he will not go away."
"And I hope that he will!" answered Margaret, her tall form drawn up to its full height, and a look of stern pride upon her face that could not very well be mistaken.
"To go into danger—perhaps to death?" asked Elsie, looking sadly at the proud Sibylline face.
"To a thousand deaths, if necessary, rather than towards the least suspicion of a want of true manhood!"
"Ah, you do not know the trembling fear of a sister's love!" said Elsie, with a sigh.
"I know a love fifty times deeper!" said Margaret, the pride still on her face, and yet that ever-returning flush coming up again to say that if love had not conquered pride it had at least divided the dominion. "Listen, Elsie Brand, to some words that you may as well understand now as ever. There is no one near to hear us, and so it is almost like speaking before heaven alone. I love your brother, deeply, devotedly, with all the power of my nature—so devotedly that if that love should be wrenched away from my heart by any circumstance, I know that my life would thenceforth be but one long, wretched mockery of existence. Happy natures like yours, Elsie, do not know the absolute agony that lies in such love. And yet I could give up that love, and my life with it, and would do so, before I would live, love, and yet despise!"
"Despise?—are you speaking of Carlton—of my brother?" asked the young girl, apparently a little lost in the mysterious energy of her companion's words.
"I said that I could not despise," Margaret Hayley went on. "I must not, or we have no future. Do you know that I should have reverenced your brother more, even if I did not love him better, if he had not refused the commission in the army tendered him at the commencement of the war? I might have wept, perhaps mourned—but I should have idolized. Now, I only love a mortal like myself, where I might have been worshipping a hero!"
"Or sobbing over a grave!" said Elsie, with a sigh which told how easily she might have been brought to illustrate the word she used.
"What then!" was the quick reply of Margaret. "The glory would have been his—the loss and grief would have been mine, and I could have borne them. But he did not choose to enter the struggle, prominent as he had once been in military movements. He had the excuse of business and occupation, and I have tried to believe that he needed no other."