She was so different from him! She took her second marriage quite as she had taken her first--a solemn fact which contained no possibility of mental alteration.

As for himself, however, he was bustling about in a world which, financially at least, seemed all alteration--there were so many sudden and almost unheard-of changes.

He began to look at her at times, with a speculative eye--not very critically, for he liked her--but with an attempt to weigh her personality.

He had known her five years and more now.

What did he know about her?
The vigor of youth--those first years--had made up for so many things, but now that he had her safely...
There came in this period the slow approach, and finally the declaration, of war between the North and the South, attended with so much excitement that almost all current minds were notably colored by it.