"Margaret Naylor! Am I to believe my ears? Do you mean to say you have let that Hillyard girl cut you out?... You grown-up baby! When I was your age, no girl should have done that to me--whether I wanted the man or not. It's a disgrace to your womanhood, and your upbringing--that means me--and your looks, and your spirit--if you had any; but you have none, or you would not have allowed it. The way that man stuck to you yesterday, and trotted away with you on that blessed island!... And you to let another woman cut in and take him away from you!... And people call you a clever girl! Hm!"

"But what was I to do, mother? I could not go in for him myself. I could not make him propose to me."

"Why not, pray? Is he not good enough for you? What do you expect? Is it a President of the United States you hope to captivate?"

"I do not understand. He could not have been persuaded to do anything so dreadful. And you, I am sure, whatever the surprise of this may have stupefied you into saying, you would not have me want to be my own aunt?"

"What do you mean? Whom are you talking about?"

"Uncle Joseph, to be sure. Whom else?"

"Joseph? You must be dreaming."

"I really think, however, he has proposed to Rose Hillyard, and been accepted."

"Impossible! Joseph marry! I never heard anything so preposterous."

"Nevertheless, you will see now. I am sure he is in love I do not think he spoke twice to me all the time we were upon the island--only to Rose, and once or twice, when it was necessary, to Wa--W--to Mr Wilkie, I ought to say."

Margaret started and grew pale as she spoke, but her mother was too intent upon the idea of Joseph's entanglement to observe the stumble.

"My dear, he was blighted some years before you were born. There was a time when I would have laughed at the notion of a blighted man. It seemed one only fit to exist in a novel. Even the novels, some of them, used to make fun of a blighted being. There was 'Mr Toots,' I remember. But in the case of your uncle Joseph, the thing positively occurred. His affections got a wrench some time very long ago,--I never heard the particulars,--and he has never got over it to this day. He might have had any woman in the country for the asking, any time these twenty years--till lately, at least, when he began to grow stout and grey, and, one would have thought, had given up all idea of that sort of thing. There never was as good and soft-hearted a fellow as Joseph, I do believe. You don't catch many of his fellow-men playing such games of constancy, I promise you. His heart must have been shattered. So different from other men's hearts, my dear, as you'll find out! They seem generally to be made of india-rubber--able to swell or contract any quant.i.ty, but there's no break in them. You may jump on them, if they will let you; but you will not crush or bruise them. Joseph is the exception to a universal rule--the best brother-in-law and friend that ever lived. But you will not persuade me that he would ask any one to marry him, after the dozen or more fine women I have seen throw themselves at his head; and he never knew it, I do believe. The idea of Joseph becoming entangled! There's no constancy in man, if it turns out that _he_ has succ.u.mbed to a woman's wiles. If what men call their heart has begun to sprout again with him, it is an unbreakable article for sure.... But I will not believe it: it would spoil my ideal of a perfect love."

"Have you not noticed, mamma, how much he and Rose have been together?"

"Now you speak of it, he has certainly taken most unusual notice of her--for him, that is. But think of the disparity in age!"

"She saved him from drowning, remember."

"That is enough to account for their striking up a fast friendship.

But _she_ is no forlorn damsel, and no pauper, evidently. She may choose where she likes. Why should she take up with a man old enough to be her father?"

"I do not think anybody need look on Uncle Joseph as old. There are very few young fellows to compare with him for activity or strength, or niceness every way. And he is so well off, besides."

"That maybe it. Poor Joseph! To be saved from the sea only to fall into the hands of a designing fortune-hunter! But I hope you are mistaken. It would be too sad; it would be dreadful! And you and Lucy, my poor children, what a difference it will make in your prospects!

You will have to stand on your merits now, if this should chance to be true. No longer the heiresses of wealthy Joseph Naylor!"

"That is no reason why Uncle Joseph should not marry. We have lived very comfortably on what papa left us."

"You do not understand yet. Wait till you go to Ottawa or Toronto. You will recognise the difference then."

"I do not want to stand on anybody's merits but my own. I think I shall be fond of Rose, after the first queerness of her being Uncle Joseph's wife wears off."

"You think so because you do not know the world. I know it, and I can tell you you are wrong.... If once that woman is married to your uncle, there will be no standing her.... And I won't!" And Mrs Naylor, flushing an angry red, turned and left the room. The impending danger to her own consequence had driven every other idea from her mind, and she went without one word upon the subject she had come to discuss--to wit, Peter Wilkie's attentions to her daughter, and how they had been received.

On the stair she met Joseph coming up as she went down. It required an effort to pull herself together and meet him as usual, but she succeeded; or perhaps he was too preoccupied to observe the constraint of her manner as she wished him good-morning and proceeded on her way.

He turned in his course, and followed her into a parlour, empty like the other rooms at that hour, owing to the absence of every one at church.

She sat down in a large chair before the open window, with the shady gallery outside, and the fanning breeze blowing in from off the sea.

He drew up the nearest seat and placed himself beside her, looking at his nails the while, but saying nothing.

She watched him from under her eyelids. It was true, then, she feared, what Margaret had been telling her, and it made her feel so angry and vindictive that she would not even help him out of the difficulty of breaking his news, by beginning the conversation. He sat, and she sat, but they did not speak. Those nails of his must have had uncommon attractions, or his thoughts had wandered away into pleasant fields, and he had forgotten that speech was expected of him.

She shuffled her feet beneath her gown and waited, growing more and more impatient. The front of her dress was agitated by the drumming of her slipper-toes, which would not keep still, yet proved an inadequate vent for the impatience which devoured her. It grew intolerable, at last, to have him beaming there upon his own finger-tips, and saying never a word. A red spot came in either cheek; and steadying her voice with a little cough into an uncertain tone, ready alike to grow plaintive or indignant as occasion should arise, she spoke at last--

"How did you contrive to be left behind yesterday?"

He started. His thoughts came back from their wool-gathering with a leap. "Very simply. We stayed too long, I suppose, on the other side of the island. Then the storm came on, and we took shelter in a fisherman's hut. We sent a man to bid the steamer people wait. When he reached the landing the steamer was gone."

"That must have been hours after we left. We got home before the storm overtook us."

"You travelled faster than the storm, then. It was quite early, I should say, when it came on us; though I cannot name the hour, having forgot my watch."

"Had n.o.body a watch? There were four of you."

"I do not know. The fact is, I was interested in other things."

"Such as--for instance----"

"Well, I was---- But really, Susan, I cannot speak of it in this cold-blooded way. The truth is, I--I have asked Rose Hillyard to marry me."

Mrs Naylor sat bolt-upright in her chair, and turned to look at him, with the red spot burning in either cheek. She lifted her hands, but whether she intended to clasp them or to do something else, was not apparent. His unabashed a.s.surance seemed to petrify her, for though her lips were parted she did not speak.

"And she has been so kind as to say yes.... Wish me joy, dear Susan, of my happiness. It is more than I can believe to be possible." Before she could protest, he had taken her hands in his and shaken them, and was imprinting a kiss upon the flushed place on her cheek.

"Let go, Joseph! You will suffocate me. This is more than---- This is something---- You must be out of your senses."

"Very nearly, Susan. I am the happiest man alive!"

"She is not half your age."

"She is twenty-five."

"And you are forty-seven. May and December! How can you possibly get on together?"

"Where love is, Susan, what else matters?"

"At your age, Joseph, you should have more sense than yield to such raptures. You must know you are talking nonsense."

"Come! you know better than that. It is your commonplace worldliness that is nonsense; and you know it. You were once a bride yourself."

"I was young then, Joseph. We get sense--or we should--as we grow older."

"Rose is young. Why may she not have fresh true feeling, just as you had yourself?"

"But has she? Does she go into raptures as you do, I wonder?"

"One would not like a girl to display her feelings too openly before marriage. You would call it boldness."