The habits of Mr. Heywood were of that peculiar nature--his desire of isolation from every thing that could be called society was so obvious, that for the first year of the residence of the family at Chicago, scarcely any intercourse had been maintained between the inmates of the cottage and the officers' wives; and it was only on the occasion of the commanding officer giving a party, to celebrate the anniversary of American Independence on the following year, that the first approach to an acquaintance had been made. It had been deemed by him a matter of duty to invite all of the few American families that were settled in the neighborhood, and of course the Heywoods were of the number. On the same principle of conventionalism the invitation was accepted, and not slight was the surprise of the ladies of the garrison, when they found in the secluded occupants of the cottage, to whom they had assigned a doubtful position in society, those to whom no effort of their own prejudice could refuse that correct estimate, which quiet dignity without ostentation, is ever certain to command.
At the announcement of the names of Mrs. and Miss Heywood, the somewhat stately Mrs. Headley was disposed to receive with hauteur the inmates of the cottage, but no sooner had Maria Heywood, accompanied by her gentle mother, entered the apartment with the easy and composed air of one to whom the drawing-room is familiar, than all her prejudices vanished, and with a heart warming towards her, as though she, had been the cherished sister of her love, she arose, pressed her hand affectionately and welcomed her to the Fort with the sincerity of a generous and elevated nature, anxious to repair its own wrong.
From that period, both by the wife of the commandant, and by Mrs. Elmsley--the only two ladies in the garrison, Maria Heywood was as much liked and courted, as she had previously been disregarded. To deny that the noble girl did in some measure exult in this change, would be to do wrong to the commendable pride of a woman, who feels that the unjust prejudice which had cast a false shadow over her recent life, has at last been removed, and that the value, of which she was modestly conscious, began to be appreciated.