“There, child, that will do,” her father interrupted, lifting an admonishing hand. “Remember, please, that you are only eighteen, and that your father is in no need of moral instruction at your hands. I understand how you feel about this question and I am perfectly willing for you to believe as seems to you right. I expect you to grant the same privilege to me and to every other member of my family. And as long as you live under your father’s roof, my daughter, he has the right also to expect from you loyalty to his interests. Do you think I shall have it hereafter?” Charlotte burst into tears. In all her saucy little life no one had ever spoken to her with such severity. “I only told Billy Saunders,” she sobbed, “and I told him not to tell!” Instantly her father was beside her, patting her shoulder, an arm about her waist. “There, there!” he soothed. “I didn’t suppose you realized what you were doing. As it happened, no great harm came of it. Just remember, after this, that it is not your duty to sit in judgment on my actions. Then we shall all move along as happily as ever.” When Rhoda went to her room and her eyes fell upon her writing table, sudden misgiving caught her breath. She had not stopped to make it tidy, after her letter-writing in the morning, because of her hurried departure for the sewing circle, and its unaccustomed disorder brought sharply to her mind the letter she had written. And that other sheet--had she destroyed it, as she meant to do? She looked the table over hastily, shuffling the clean sheets of paper in her hand. “How silly!” she thought. “Of course I destroyed it! I remember, I picked up several sheets together that I didn’t want, and burned them, and that was among them!” Still, for a moment, the uneasy fear persisted that perhaps she had put it into her letter. She burned with shame at the thought that her lover might read those words. Then with a sudden vault her mind faced about and she felt herself almost exulting that at last he might know how much she cared, that at last, in spite of herself she had surrendered. “If I did send it,” she thought as she sat at her window, in the dark, “he will come and I shall have to give up.” Her mother’s words recurred to her: “You see that it is possible for husband and wife to live together in love and trust and happiness, even though they do hold opposite opinions about slavery.” They would be happy--ah, no doubt about that! And perhaps, if they were married and constantly together, she could make Jeff see the wrongs of slavery. She could point out to him specific instances of injustice and rouse that side of his conscience which now seemed to be dead. He had such a fine, noble nature in all other things--it was only because he had been brought up in this belief and had always been accustomed to taking slavery for granted. With his great love for her she would surely be able to exert some influence over him, and she would use it all to one end.