MARA


On the same evening which witnessed Uncle Sheba's false step and its
temporarily disastrous results, Owen Clancy sat brooding over his fire in
his bachelor apartment. If his sitting-room did not suggest wealth, it
certainly indicated refined and intellectual tastes and a fair degree of
prosperity. A few fine pictures were on the walls, an unusually
well-selected library, although a small one, was in a bookcase, while upon
the table lay several of the best magazines and reviews of the period.
Above the mantel was suspended a cavalry sabre, its scabbard so dented as
to suggest that it had seen much and severe service. Young Clancy's eyes
were fixed upon it, and his revery was so deep that a book fell from his
hand to the floor without his notice. His thoughts, however, were dwelling
upon a young girl. Strange that a deadly weapon should be allied to her in
association. Yet so it was. He never could look upon that sabre which his
father had used effectively throughout the Civil War, without thinking of
Mara Wallingford. Neither this object nor any other was required to
produce thoughts of her, for he passed few waking hours in which she was
not present to his fancy. He loved her sincerely, and felt that she knew
it, and he also hoped that she concealed a deeper regard for him than she
would admit even to herself. Indeed he almost believed that if he could
share fully with her all the ideas and antipathies symbolized by the
battered scabbard before him, his course of love would run smoothly. It
was just at this point that the trouble between them arose. She was
looking back; he, forward. He could not enter into her sad and bitter
retrospection, feeling that this was morbid and worse than useless.
Remembering how cruelly she and her kindred had suffered, he made great
allowances for her, and had often tried to soften the bitterness in her