“Major Helmstedt--Major Helmstedt! Come back, sir. Don’t go; you must please to listen to me,” cried Nellie, running after him, the principle of fear now quite predominating over that of defiance. But the outraged father, without deigning a word or look of reply, hurried onward toward the beach. Nellie, in great alarm, dispatched a servant in haste after him, to beseech him, in her name, to return and stay to dinner--or, if he would not honor her so far, at least to accept the use of a carriage, or a boat, to convey him whithersoever he wished to go. But Major Helmstedt, with arrogant scorn, repulsed all these offers. Throwing a half guinea to the negro to take temporary charge of his trunks, he strode on his way, following the windings of the waterside road for many miles, until late in the afternoon he reached Belleview, whence he intended to take a boat to the island. His cause of indignation was reasonable, and his rage increased with time and reflection. That Margaret had been foully wronged by the Houstons he from his deepest convictions believed. That the charges brought against her had the slightest foundation in fact, he could not for a moment credit. All his own intimate knowledge of his pure-hearted child, from her earliest infancy to the day when he left her in Mrs. Houston’s care, conclusively contradicted these calumnies. But that, for some reason or other, unconfessed, the Houstons wished to break off the contemplated alliance with his family he felt assured. And that his daughter’s betrothed was in correspondence with Mrs. Houston, and in connivance with her plans, he had been left to believe, by the incoherence, if not by the intentional misrepresentations, of Nellie’s statement. That they should wish, without just cause, to break the engagement with his daughter, was both dishonorable and dishonoring--that they should attempt this through such means, was scandalous and insulting to the last degree. That Ralph Houston should be either an active or a passive party to this plan, was an offense only to be satisfied by the blood of the offender. His pride in an old, untainted name, not less than his affection for his only daughter, was wounded to the very quick.