to her friend.  The thing that was irritating her was that he could approach so nearly to her standard and yet fail in a point that to her was vital.  His course indicated unknown characteristics or circumstances, and she felt that she could never give him her confidence and unreserved regard while he fell short of the test of manhood which she believed that the times demanded.  If underneath all his apparent changes for the better there was an innate lack of courage to meet danger and hardship, or else a cold, calculating purpose not to take these risks, she would shrink from him in strong repulsion.  She knew that the war had developed not a few constitutional cowards,—­men to be pitied, it is true, but with a commiseration that, in her case, would be mingled with contempt.  On the other hand, if he reasoned, “I will win her if I can; I will do all and more than she can ask, but I will not risk the loss of a lifetime’s enjoyment of my wealth,” she would quietly say to him by her manner:  “Enjoy your wealth.  I can have no part in such a scheme of existence; I will not give my hand, even in friendship, to a man who would do less than I would, were I in his place.”

If her father was right, and he had scruples of conscience, or some other unknown restraint, she felt that she must know all before she would give her trust and more.  If he could not satisfy her on these points, as others had done so freely and spontaneously, he had no right to ask or expect more from her than ordinary courtesy.

Having thus resolutely considered antidotes for a tendency towards relentings not at all to her mind, and met, as she believed, her father’s charge of unfairness, her thoughts, full of sympathy and hope, dwelt upon the condition of her friend.  Recalling the past and the present, her heart grew very tender, and she found that he occupied in it a foremost place.  Indeed, it seemed to her a species of disloyalty to permit any one to approach his place and that of Mr. Lane, for both formed an inseparable part of her new and more earnest life.

She, too, had changed, and was changing.  As her nature deepened and grew stronger it was susceptible of deeper and stronger influences.  Under the old regime pleasure, excitement, triumphs of power that ministered to vanity, had been her superficial motives.  To the degree that she had now attained true womanhood, the influences that act upon and control a woman were in the ascendant.  Love ceased to dwell in her mind as a mere fastidious preference, nor could marriage ever be a calculating choice, made with the view of securing the greatest advantages.  She knew that earnest men loved her without a thought of calculation,—­loved her for herself alone.  She called them friends now, and to her they were no more as yet.  But their downright sincerity made her sincere and thoughtful.  Her esteem and affection for them were so great that she was not at all certain that circumstances and fuller acquaintance