chiefly accounted for the clever girl's coldness towards him.






CHAPTER XIV.

OMINOUS.





SUBORDINATE only to her father and two chief friends, in Marian's
thoughts, was her enemy, for as such she now regarded Willard Merwyn.
She had felt his attentions to be humiliating from the first. They
had presented her former life, in which her own amusement and pleasure
had been her chief thought, in another and a very disagreeable
light. These facts alone would have been sufficient to awaken a
vindictive feeling, for she was no saint. In addition, she bitterly
resented his indifference to a cause made so dear by her father's
devotion and her friends' brave self-sacrifice. Whatever his
motive might be, she felt that he was cold-blooded, cowardly, or
disloyal, and such courtesy as she showed him was due to little else
than the hope of inflicting upon him some degree of humiliation.
She had seen too many manifestations of honest interest and ardent
love to credit him with any such emotion, and she had no scruples
in wounding his pride to the utmost.