ich a stalwart man can perform for a delicate petted young
creature such as I was then.

"As grandmother's infirmity increased, and her strict supervision
relaxed, I met Cuthbert more frequently, but as yet without her
knowledge; and gradually be won my childish heart completely. His
father, General Rene Laurance, was a haughty wealthy planter residing
in one of the Middle States, and Cuthbert was his only child, the
pride of his heart and home. Those happy days seem a misty dream to
me now, I have so utterly outgrown the faith that lent a glory to
that early time. Cuthbert assured me of his affection, swore undying
allegiance to me; and like many other silly, trusting, inexperienced,
doomed young fools, I believed every syllable that he whispered in my
ears.

"One Sabbath when grandmother supposed I was saying my prayers in the
church, which I had left home to attend, I stole away to our trysting
place in a neighbouring wood, that bordered a small stream. Oh, the
bitter fruits of that filial disobedience! The accursed harvest that
ripened for me, that it seems I shall never have done garnering!
Clandestine interviews concealed, because I knew prohibition would
follow discovery! I am a melancholy monument of the sin of deception;
and that child who deliberately snatches the reins of control from
the hands where God decrees them, and dares substitute her will and
judgment for those of parents or guardians, drives inevitably on to
ruin, and will live to curse her folly. That day Peleg was fishing,
and surprised us at the moment when Cuthbert was bending down to kiss
me. Having heard all that passed, he waited till evening, and finding
me in the little garden attached to our house, he savagely upbraided
me for preferring Cuthbert's society to his, claimed me as his, by
right of devotion; and when I spurned him indignantly, and forbade
him to speak to me in future, he became infuriated, rushed into the
cottage, and disclosed all that he had discovered."

"I knew it! I felt assured you must always have loathed him!"
exclaimed Regina, with kindling eyes; and catching her mother's dress
as she passed beside her.

"Why, my darling?"

"Because he was coarse, brutal! When he dared to call you 'Minnie,'
if I had been a man I would have strangled him!"

Her mother kissed her, and answered sadly:

"And yet he loved me infinitely better than the man for whom I
repulsed, nay insulted him. He was poor, unpolished, but at that