ked. "I have tried
to be a peaceable man and Christian magistrate, albeit a poor hypocrite
in some, things, but I am pushed too far. My wife's smallness is worse
than insanity and wickedness put together. Between her and this
money-broking fiend, and my neglected child entrapped into such a
marriage, by God! I will clean my old duelling arms, and appeal to
injustice itself to set me even."

If he had been fine-looking in his sincere grief, he was thrice more
attractive in his sincere high spirit. Vesta, admiring him in spite of
her cares, did not like to see him in this unnatural recklessness.

"Dear father," she said, soothingly, "you have no cause of quarrel."

"I have every cause," he cried; "the proposal to marry you was an
insult, for which I should have challenged him, and shot him if he
declined. Now he has married you and absconded, using you and the Custis
honor with contempt. In my day I was the best shot in Eastern Virginia.
I can kill a man in this cause as easily as I have broken either of a
man's arms, at choice, in my courting days. Public opinion will clear me
under this provocation, and I can acquit my own conscience, abhorrent
as duelling is to me. My sons-in-law would leap to take the quarrel up,
and rid the world of Meshach Milburn."

"That is mamma's idea, to kill the debtor who has been specially kind to
her. She says she will send for Uncle Allan McLane, and is more
unreasonable than ever. Papa, your feelings are unjust. Something we do
not know of has happened to Mr. Milburn. He was not himself all the
while at the church. Now that I recollect, he was not ardent for the
marriage to be so soon. It was I who hastened the hour. Let us be right
in everything, having progressed so far with the recovery of our
fortunes, and let us await the fulfilment of events hopefully."

"Milburn was drunk at the ceremony, I saw that," Judge Custis said, "but
it was no excuse. In fact, what good can come of this violent alliance?
It seems to me that we have leaped from the frying-pan into the fire. I
feel ugly, my daughter, and there is no concealing it."

"Then you are in the mood to talk to mother this morning," Vesta said,
"while you have some unusual will and spirit. This resentful sullenness
she is showing I fear more than your passing emotion, papa. Be firm, yet
kind, with her, and I will go to find my husband. Yes, that is my place.
He may be more justly complaining of my absence now, than we of his
neg