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While his manner for a few weeks past, and especially his words during their recent interview, made it clear that he was not the rough, awkward rustic she had first imagined him to be, he still seemed very crude and angular. In spite of her love for Vinton Arnold, which had not abated in the least, he had ceased to be her ideal man.
He might not, in an emergency, be nicely scrupulous as to means, but he never wavered in respect to objects. His will was the written law to his regiment, and I believed his executive abilities superior to those of any officer in the brigade, not excepting the General's. The New York regiment was commanded by a young officer named Vinton.
Soon the doors were filled with little groups of men and women, all exchanging friendly greetings, and indulging in pleasant gossip before seeking their homes, and to the intense delight of Vinton, he noticed among a company of young ladies, the face and form of Mary Crilly, the pretty servant of the sister of Newton Edwards.
"Oh, I don't know about that; but it is a very unusual thing to have strange men loitering about our neighborhood, and she feels very nervous about it." Vinton expressed his profound sympathy for the unfortunate family, and without hinting any suspicion that anything of a criminal nature had occurred, he parted from the young lady and returned to his home.
Her chief impulse was to escape, for the bare thought of words of love from him or any one except Vinton Arnold was intensely repugnant. As she glanced around, seeking in what direction she might take her flight, she saw a gentleman coming rapidly toward the house. After a second's hesitation she rushed toward him, crying, "Papa, papa, you are welcome!"
Brute strength may be his ideal of manhood, but it's not mine; and he knows so little of women that he thinks I ought to despise one who is simply unfortunate, and through no fault of his own. Poor, poor Vinton!
And now Saturday morning, while the guns of Alcatraz were booming in salute across the bay and all the garrison was out along the shore or on the seaward heights, waving farewell to the Vinton flotilla, and his mother and Maidie had gone out with the department commander to bid them god-speed, poor Sandy sat wretchedly in his quarters.
The old man lifted his head and gazed upon the pure, sweet face at which he had looked so often and questioningly before. "Oh, Vinton, Vinton, God forgive me! I see it all. Our insane pride and prejudice kept a good angel from our home." "Yes, father, this is Mildred Jocelyn. Was I wrong to love her?" "Oh, blind, blind fool that I've been!" the old man groaned. "Don't grieve so, father.
Even to Vinton Arnold's perturbed and disordered mind the act was so essentially feminine and natural, so remote from ghostly weirdness, that he raised himself on his elbow and exclaimed, "Millie, Millie Jocelyn!" "Ah," cried Mildred starting from her chair and looking fearfully toward the half-closed door of Mrs. Sheppard's room.
If you have any manhood at all, if you have the ordinary instincts of a gentleman, you will respect the commands of an orphan girl, and leave me, never to approach me again." Speechless, almost paralyzed in his despair, he tottered to the steps and disappeared. AS Mrs. Wheaton crossed the hallway from a brief call on a neighbor, Vinton Arnold passed her.