“Leave matters just where they are for the present. There is nothing wrong in this, farther than that it has unfortunately been made the occasion of gossip; therefore, of course it must be perfectly cleared up for Margaret’s own sake. But our interference at present evidently will not tend to precipitate a satisfactory denouement.” “Oh, how I wish her father or Ralph were home. I have a great mind to write to them!” exclaimed Nellie, who certainly was governed by an unconscious attraction toward mischief-making. “My good lady, do nothing of the sort; it would be both useless and harmful.” “What, then, shall I do?” questioned Nellie, impatiently. “Consult your husband.” “Consult Colonel Houston! You certainly can’t know Colonel Houston. Why, well as he likes me, he would--bite my head off if I came to him with any tale of scandal,” said Nellie, querulously. “Then leave the matter to me for the present,” said the minister, rising and taking his leave. Meanwhile, Margaret Helmstedt had remained where the pastor had left her, with clenched hands and sunken head in the same attitude of fixed despair. Then, suddenly rising, with a low, long wail of woe, she threw herself on her knees before her mother’s portrait, and raising both arms with open hands, as though offering up some oblation to that image, she cried: “Oh, mother! mother! here is the first gift, a spotless name! freely renounced for thy sake! freely offered up to thee! Only look on me! love me, my mother! for I have loved thee more than all things--even than him, mother mine!” Mrs. Houston, in her excited state of feeling, could not keep quiet. Even at the risk of being “flouted” or ridiculed, she went into the colonel’s little study, which was the small room in the second story immediately over the front entrance, and sitting down beside him, solemnly entered upon the all-engrossing subject of her thoughts. The colonel listened, going through the successive stages of being surprised, amused and bored, and finally, when she ceased and waited for his comments, he just went on tickling his ear with the feathered end of his pen and smiled in silence. “Now, then, colonel, what do you think of all this?” “Why, that it must be all perfectly correct, my dear, and need not give you the slightest uneasiness. That our fair little daughter-in-law regularly writes and receives letters from a certain person, is of course a sufficient proof of the correctness of both correspondence and correspondent,” said the colonel, gallantly. “All that may be very true, and at the same time very indiscreet--think of what they say.” “Tah--tah, my love! never mind ‘they say!’ the only practical part of it is, that in the absence of Ralph, if I should happen to meet with ‘they say’ in man’s form, I shall be at the trouble of chastising him, that’s all!” “Now, colonel! of all things, I do hope that you will not, at your age, do anything rash.”