"I need hardly tell you, Julia, that I am disturbed as I never was before in all my life," replied he, maintaining his calmness only with a struggle.
"I can see that something momentous has happened in our country," she added, hardly able to contain herself, for she felt that she was in the presence of an unexplained calamity.
"Something has happened, my dear; something terrible,—something that I did not expect, though many others were sure that it would come," he continued, seating himself at the side of his wife.
"But you do not tell me what it is," said the lady, with a look which indicated that her worst fears were confirmed. "Is Florry worse? Is she"—
"So far as I know, Florry is as well as usual," interposed the husband. "But a state of war exists at the present moment between the North and the South."
[CHAPTER II]
THE BROTHER AT THE SOUTH
Even five months before, when the Bellevite had sailed on her cruise, the rumble of coming events had been heard in the United States; and it had been an open question whether or not war would grow out of the complications between the North and the South.
Only a few letters, and fewer newspapers, had reached the owner of the yacht; and he and his family on board had been very indifferently informed in regard to the progress of political events at home. Captain Passford was one of those who confidently believed that no very serious difficulty would result from the entanglements into which the country had been plunged by the secession of the most of the Southern States.
He would not admit even to himself that war was possible; and before his departure he had scouted the idea of a conflict with arms between the brothers of the North and the brothers of the South, as he styled them.