"I was prepared to expect _that_.
You can be alarmed enough, if Eva coughs, or has the least thing the
matter with her; but you never think of me."

"If it's particularly agreeable to you to have heart disease, why, I'll
try and maintain you have it," said St. Clare; "I didn't know it was."

"Well, I only hope you won't be sorry for this, when it's too late!"
said Marie; "but, believe it or not, my distress about Eva, and the
exertions I have made with that dear child, have developed what I have
long suspected."

What the _exertions_ were which Marie referred to, it would have been
difficult to state. St. Clare quietly made this commentary to himself,
and went on smoking, like a hard-hearted wretch of a man as he was,
till a carriage drove up before the verandah, and Eva and Miss Ophelia
alighted.

Miss Ophelia marched straight to her own chamber, to put away her bonnet
and shawl, as was always her manner, before she spoke a word on any
subject; while Eva came, at St: Clare's call, and was sitting on his
knee, giving him an account of the services they had heard.

They soon heard loud exclamations from Miss Ophelia's room, which,
like the one in which they were sitting, opened on to the verandah and
violent reproof addressed to somebody.

"What new witchcraft has Tops been brewing?" asked St. Clare. "That
commotion is of her raising, I'll be bound!"

And, in a moment after, Miss Ophelia, in high indignation, came dragging
the culprit along.

"Come out here, now!" she said. "I _will_ tell your master!"

"What's the case now?" asked Augustine.

"The case is, that I cannot be plagued with this child, any longer! It's
past all bearing; flesh and blood cannot endure it! Here, I locked her
up, and gave her a hymn to study; and what does she do, but spy
out where I put my key, and has gone to my bureau, and got a
bonnet-trimming, and cut it all to pieces to make dolls' jackets! I never
saw anything like it, in my life!"

"I told you, Cousin," said Marie, "that you'd find out that these
creatures can't be brought up without severity. If I had _my_ way, now,"
she said, looking reproachfully at St. Clare, "I'd send that child out,
and have her thoroughly whipped; I'd have her whipped till she couldn't
stand!"

"I don't doubt it," said St. Clare. "Tell me of the lovely rule of
woman! I never saw above a dozen women that wouldn't half kill a horse,
or a servant, either, if they had their own way with them!--let alone