A Daughter of Maryland — page 165: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

142 A DAUGHTER OF MARYLAND. quickly as I could get here, and I am not going to desert you again.’’ Her words fell like oil on troubled waters, and under her eentle administration Major Lancier soon became calmer, though at times, as he described how he had found that Robert had Northern sympathies, the old passion would reassert itself. It was an hour Aurian never forgot. While in her heart she felt that Robert had acted conscientiously, she felt that he had dealt a most cruel, if not unnecessary, blow. No man could be more patriotic in his spirit than her father, and it was that very love and devotion to his native land and its long-accustomed ways that made his adopted son appear in his mind a traitor to all that was worthy of belief. When at last Aurian had persuaded him into a more amiable mood, she sought Mrs. Ralston to learn further particulars of the manner of the coming of the storm. The housekeeper showed that she was undergoing great excite- ment, but after the first greeting she took a letter ree her pocket, saying: ‘*Mr. Robert gave this to me to hand to you, and charged me to let no one else see it. He said it was very important you should get it, and he was afraid it would get lost in the mail. I hope the poor boy will come out all right, but I am sorry for him.”’ With the communication from Robert in her hand, Aurian had no desire to prolong her interview with the housekeeper. In the sacred precinct of her own room, she broke the seal with a neryous hand. The message was long and closely written, but she read it twice before she laid it down, and then she rested her head in her hands and burst into tears. Finally, when she had become somewhat calmer, she returned to the missive, and passing swiftly over the first pages, which described his father’s discovery of his lack of loyalty to the cause he had espoused, shy read, while the “S co Nh cComicboo