“Oh, Thomas, Thomas!” cried my aunt. “Why did you discourage my efforts to marry her to Charlie? Why did you tell him you could never sanction his marriage with her? Didn’t I assure you, night after night, that there was no other way of saving her from that wretch! My child, my child! where is she now? Will she ever come back to me?” “She will, believe me, she will,” I said. “She will tell you that she never could have been happy without Curling, and nothing you could have said or done would have prevented this thing from happening sooner or later.” “But to be deceived by one’s only child!” burst out my aunt. “Has she no heart? Didn’t she fear that such conduct would break her papa and me down, and put us into our graves? And how cruelly _you_ have been deceived!” “Oh, don’t think of me--I am nowhere in this grief. What can I do to serve you? Give me some commission.” “If I knew where to find her,” cried my uncle, “I wouldn’t seek her. What! bring her back alone, after she has been away from us two days? If she returns at all, she must return with her husband.” “You are quite right,” said I. “We can do nothing but be patient. Depend upon it you will receive a letter from her to-morrow morning.” And then as the whole truth burst upon me, in one of those successive shocks, with which an astounding event thunders its way, so to speak, into the mind, I shouted: “What a villain! what a trickster! what a hypocrite! Never by word or look, often as I have tried to get the truth out of him, has he given me reason to believe he cared a fig for Conny!” And then _her_ treachery smote me, and I gasped--I gasped! At this juncture my aunt went into hysterics. What an evening that was! I wouldn’t go through such a time again, not for the love of all the fair women Mr. Tennyson dreamt about. _Dinner!_ We had no dinner. It was served--we were summoned to it--but my aunt was in bed, and the sight of food made my uncle speechless. I swallowed some soup, quite unconsciously, because it was set before me; but my grief revolted at solids. I could as soon have eaten the cook as the slice of beef which my uncle, with the tears standing in his eyes, blindly hacked off for me. Oh daughters, dear! what do you mean by making your papas and mammas wretched? Can’t you love decently, and marry becomingly? Do you think it fun to go running off o’ nights with men, and wringing tears out of hearts you were sent into this world to soothe and bless? Is romance spiced by a mother’s lamentations? Is love sweetened by a father’s groans? If you think this, get along with you, do, to the Cannibal Islands, where the people who marry, first propitiate the gods by the sacrifice of a relation.