d seek consolation in the glass
and make up in quantity what it lacked in alcoholic strength. He was
impatient of all reproof now, and would listen to no talk; but Nellie
was years her junior,--more years than she would admit except at such
times as these, when she meant to admonish; and Nellie had to take it.

Two weeks after their arrival at Warrener the burden of Mrs. Rayner's
song--morn, noon, and night--was, "What would Mr. Van Antwerp say if he
could but see this or hear that?"

Can any reader recall an instance where the cause of an absent lover was
benefited by the ceaseless warning in a woman's ear, "Remember, you're
engaged"? The hero of antiquity who caused himself to be attended by a
shadowing slave whispering ever and only, "Remember, thou art mortal,"
is a fine figure to contemplate--at this remote date. He, we are told,
admitted the need, submitted to the infliction. But lives there a woman
who will admit that she needs any instruction as to what her conduct
should be when the lord of her heart is away? Lives there a woman who,
submitting, because she cannot escape, to the constant reminder, "Thou
art engaged," will not resent it in her heart of hearts and possibly
revenge herself on the one alone whom she holds at her mercy? Left to
herself,--to her generosity, her conscience, her innate tenderness,--the
cause of the absent one will plead for itself, and, if it have even
faint foundation, hold its own. "With the best intentions in the world,"
many an excellent cause has been ruined by the injudicious urgings of a
mother; but to talk an engaged girl into mutiny, rely on the
infallibility of two women,--a married sister or a maiden aunt.

Just what Mr. Van Antwerp would have said could he have seen the
situation at Warrener is perhaps impossible to predict. Just what he did
say without seeing was, perhaps, the most unwise thing he could have
thought of: he urged Mrs. Rayner to keep reminding Nellie of her
promise. His had not been a life of unmixed joy. He was now nearly
thirty-five, and desperately in love with a pretty girl who had simply
bewitched him during the previous summer. It was not easy to approach
her then, he found, for her sister kept vigilant guard; but, once
satisfied of his high connections, his wealth, and his social standing,
the door was opened, and he was something more than welcomed, said the
gossips at the Surf House. What his past history had been, where and how
his life had been