ear the crown of Josephine. The word I gave,
in pity of my parents, to the man who is now my husband, to become his
wife, I would not take back to my dying day, unless he first denied his
word. I believe there is such a thing as honor yet. Mother, you fret my
father by such principles."

"They are the principles of your uncle, Allan McLane."

"A man I shrink from," Vesta said, "although he is your brother. His
unfeeling respectability, his unchangeableness, his want of every
impulse but hate, his appropriation of our family honor, as if he was
our lawgiver and high-sheriff, his secretiveness, formal religion, and
mysterious prosperity, I do not appreciate, much as I have tried to be
charitable to him. I do not like Baltimore as I do the Eastern Shore; it
is fierce, hard, and suspicious."

"You shall not run down Baltimore before me," Mrs. Custis cried, hotly.
"It is a paradise to this region; and comparing Meshach Milburn to your
uncle is blasphemy."

"I have on my finger, mother, his mother's ring."

"A pretty object it is," said Mrs. Custis, taking a peep at it and
another at her check; "it requires a microscope to find it. The next
thing you will be walking through Baltimore on your bridal tour,
followed by a mob of small boys, to see Meshach's old steeple-top hat.
Then I shall feel for you, Vesta."

The cruel blow struck home. Vesta's reception, so unexpected, so
acrimonious, affected her with a sense of gross ingratitude, and with a
greater disappointment--she had failed to restore joy to her parents by
her desperate sacrifice.

She began to feel that she might have done wrong. The broad sight of her
act, looking back upon it from this momentary revulsion, seemed a
frightful flood, like the mouth of one of the little Eastern Shore
rivers that expands to a gulf in the progress of a brook. Last night she
saw in an instant the misunderstandings and ruin she could prevent by
her ready decision; now she saw the misunderstandings she never could
correct, the prejudices stronger than parental sympathy, the wide
separation her marriage had effected between two classes of her duty--to
think with her husband's affection and her mother's interests at the
same time.

It also occurred to her that her father, the darling of her thought, had
seemed slow to appreciate her marriage sacrifice, and was testy at her
willingness to loosen her heart with her vestal zone towards her
husband.

The whole day had passed with suc