Frank had gone angrily from home when, some three months since, Ada had told him her determination. His brother had been then absent, and they had not met till this their Christmas meeting. Now it had been understood between them, by the intervention of their mother, that they would say nothing to each other as to Ada Forster. The elder had, of course, no cause for saying aught, and Frank was too proud to wish to speak on such a matter before his successful rival. But Frank had not given up the battle. When Ada had made her speech to him, he had told her that he would not take it as conclusive. “The whole tenor of Tom’s life,” he had said to her, “must be distasteful to you. It is impossible that you should live as the wife of a slave-owner.”

“In a few years there will be no slaves in Kentucky,” she had answered.

“Wait till then,” he had answered, “and I also will wait.”

And so he had left her, resolving that he would bide his time. He thought that the right still remained to him of seeking Ada’s hand, although she had told him that she loved his brother.

“I know that such a marriage would make each of them miserable,” he said to himself over and over again. And now that these terrible times had come upon them, and that he was going one way with the Union, while his brother was going the other way with Secession, he felt more strongly than ever that he might still be successful. The political predilections of American women are as strong as those of American men. And Frank Reckenthorpe knew that all Ada’s feelings were as strongly in favour of the Union as his own. Had not she been born and bred in Maine? Was she not ever keen for total abolition, till even the old Major, with all his gallantry for womanhood and his love for the young girl who had come to his house in his old age, would be driven occasionally by stress of feeling to rebuke her? Frank Reckenthorpe was patient, hopeful, and firm. The time must come when Ada would learn that she could not be a fit wife for his brother. The time had, he thought, perhaps come already; and so he spoke to her a word or two on the evening of that day on which she had laid her hand upon his brother’s mouth.

“Ada,” he had said, “there are bad times coming to us.”

“Good times, I hope,” she had answered. “No one could expect that the thing could be done without some struggle. When the struggle has passed, we shall say that good times have come.” The thing of which she spoke was that little thing of which she was ever thinking—the enfranchisement of four millions of slaves.

“I fear that there will be bad times first. Of course, I am thinking of you now.”

“Bad or good, they will not be worse to me than to others.”

“They would be very bad to you if this State were to secede, and if you were to join your lot to my brother’s. In the first place, all your fortune would be lost to him and to you.”

“I do not see that; but, of course, I will caution him that it may be so. If it alters his views, I shall hold him free to act as he chooses.”

“But, Ada, should it not alter yours?”

“What,—because of my money?—or because Tom could not afford to marry a girl without a fortune?”

“I did not mean that. He might decide that for himself. But your marriage with him under such circumstances as those which he now contemplates would be as though you married a Spaniard or a Greek adventurer. You would be without country, without home, without fortune, and without standing-ground in the world. Look you, Ada, before you answer. I frankly own that I tell you this because I want you to be my wife, and not his.”

“Never, Frank; I shall never be your wife, whether I marry him or no.”