t she overheard Miss Kate telling her mother
that Lenora Carter said that Mr. Hamilton was going to be married to
her mother's intimate friend, Mrs. Carter would have denied the whole
and probably divulged her own secret, had not Lenora, who chanced to
be present, declared, with the coolest effrontery, that 'twas all
true--that her mother had promised to stand up with them, and so folks
would find it to be if they did not die of curiosity before autumn!

"Lenora, child, how can you talk so?" asked the distressed lady, as
the door closed upon her visitor.

Lenora went off into fits of explosive laughter, bounding up and down
like an india-rubber ball, and at last condescended to say, "I know
what I'm about. Do you want Mag Hamilton breaking up the match, as she
surely would do, between this and autumn, if she knew it?"

"And what can she do?" asked Mrs. Carter.

"Why," returned Lenora, "can't she write to the place you came from,
if, indeed, such a spot can be found?--for I believe you sometimes
book yourself from one town and sometimes from another. But depend
upon it you had better take my advice and keep still, and in the
denouement which follows, I alone shall be blamed for a slight stretch
of truth which you can easily excuse as 'one of _dear_ Lenora's silly,
childish freaks!'"

Upon second thoughts, Mrs. Carter concluded to follow her daughter's
advice, and the next time Mr. Hamilton called, she laughingly told the
story which Lenora had set afloat, saying, by way of excuse, that the
dear girl did not like to hear her mother joked on the subject of
matrimony, and had turned the attention of people another way.

Mr. Hamilton hardly relished this, and half wished, mayhap, as,
indeed, gentlemen generally do in similar circumstances, that the
little "objection" in the shape of Lenora had never had existence, or
at least had never called the widow mother!

CHAPTER VII.

THE STEPMOTHER.

Rapidly the summer was passing away, and as autumn drew near the wise
gossips of Glenwood began to whisper that the lady from the East was
in danger of being supplanted in her rights by the widow, whose house
Mr. Hamilton was known to visit two or three times each week. But
Lenora had always some plausible story on hand. "Mother and the lady
had been so intimate--in fact, more than once rocked in the same
cradle--and 'twas no wonder Mr. Hamilton came often to a place where
he could hear so much about her."

So when b