The first thing that struck you about “Miss Margaret” was her appalling incompetence. But underneath it lay the most exclusively maternal soul imaginable. She had nursed her children when they were almost two years old, great healthy calves running about the place and standing up to suck; she had rocked them to sleep in her arms when they were big enough to be reading Virgil; she had shed as many tears over a broken finger as most mothers shed over a funeral. She wanted her daughters to be happy, and to this end she would give them anything that civilization provided; she would even be willing that one of them should marry a man whose father “wore stripes”—so far as she was concerned, and so long as she remained alone with the daughter. You must picture her, clasping Sylvia in her arms and weeping from general agitation; moved to pity by the tale of Frank’s loneliness, moved to awe by the tale of his goodness—but then suddenly smitten as by a thunderbolt with the thought: “What will people say! What will your Aunt Nannie say!” While Sylvia was bent upon having her way, you must not imagine that she did not feel any of these emotions. Although she was mostly Lady Lysle, her far-off ancestress, she was also a little of “Miss Margaret,” and was almost capsized in these gales of emotion. She remembered a hundred scenes of tenderness and devotion; she clasped the great girl-mother in her arms, and mingled their tears and vowed that she would never do anything to make her unhappy. It was a lachrymal lane—this pathway of Sylvia’s engagement! With her father she took a different line. She got the Major alone in his office and talked to him solemnly, not about love and romance, but about Frank Shirley’s character. She knew that the Major was disturbed by the wildness of the young men of the world about him; she had heard him discuss the pace at which Aunt Nannie’s boys were traveling. And here was a man who had sowed no wild oats, and had learned the lesson of self-control. She was surprised at the way the Major took it. He clutched the arms of his chair and went white when he caught the import of her discourse; but he heard her to the end, and then sat for a long while in silence. Finally, he inquired, “Sylvia, did anybody ever tell you why your Uncle Laurence killed himself?” “No,” she replied. “He was engaged to a girl, and her parents made her break off the match. I never knew why; but it ruined the girl’s life, as well as his, and it made a terrible impression on me. So I made a vow—and now, I suppose, is the time I have to keep it. I said I would never interfere in a love-affair of one of my children!” Sylvia was deeply affected, not only by his words, but by the intense agitation which she saw he was repressing. “Papa, does it seem so very dreadful to you?” she asked.