Mrs. Pendarrel had been thunderstruck by the attitude assumed by her daughter. She had wrapped herself securely in reliance upon her own power, and so bold a defiance almost stunned her. She bitterly regretted the sarcasms into which she had been betrayed by passion. She readily perceived the effect they would have upon a temper like Mildred's, a temper in some respects like her own. And should all her schemes, all the plans which she built up with so much care and labour, be frustrated by the obstinacy of a love-sick girl? Should Esther Pendarrel confess herself defeated? There was little hope of that. But she felt dim fears and doubts besetting her. She experienced anew some of the despondency caused by the destruction of her house; she looked to the future with some foreboding of evil. But activity must subdue all such misgivings. This insolent suitor must be crushed at once. Her daughter must be schooled into instant submission. Nearly cotemporaneously with Mildred's letter-writing, her mother also indited two epistles. The one she despatched the same evening, by a trusty hand, to Tolpeden Park; the other she sent immediately to Messrs. Truby's offices in Lincoln's Inn. There would apparently be some searing of hearts, before the war which was that day proclaimed arrived at a peaceful termination. CHAPTER VI. These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die; like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in its own deliciousness, And in the taste confounds the appetite: Therefore, love moderately; long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. Shakspeare. It was a notable fact at this time that Seymour Rereworth, the recluse law-student, whom Mrs. Winston used to rally for his devotion to so crabbed a mistress, became a frequent haunter of the house in Cavendish Square. His acquaintance with the Trevethlans, and his relationship to Gertrude, opened the door, closed to all besides, of that little boudoir where she and Helen used to sit together, when they were unengaged; precisely the same room from which Randolph pointed out to Mildred the star which he fancifully chose as the arbiter of his destiny. There Rereworth, forsaking the tangled intricacies of Astræa, learned to disentangle skeins of silk; there, instead of threading the mazes of some perplexing quibble, he could, on occasion, thread a needle; there, instead of reading of the wars of the alphabet, A against B, and C against D, he would read aloud the newest poem of Byron, or the latest novel of Scott; and Seymour was a good reader, and did not object to hear himself read, particularly when Helen Trevethlan listened. And the expression one can throw into such poetry and such prose is very convenient. So Rereworth was now the Corsair, with-- My own Medora, sure thy song is sad. Then Selim, with--