calls for me in the pony-chaise to-morrow," I thought to
myself, "with Ariel I go."

Mrs. Macallan set me down at Benjamin's door.

I mentioned to her at parting--I stood sufficiently in awe of her to put
it off till the last moment--that Miserrimus Dexter had arranged to send
his cousin and his pony-chaise to her residence on the next day; and I
inquired thereupon whether my mother-in-law would permit me to call at
her house to wait for the appearance of the cousin, or whether she would
prefer sending the chaise on to Benjamin's cottage. I fully expected an
explosion of anger to follow this bold avowal of my plans for the next
day. The old lady agreeably surprised me. She proved that she had really
taken a liking to me: she kept her temper.

"If you persist in going back to Dexter, you certainly shall not go to
him from my door," she said. "But I hope you will _not_ persist. I hope
you will awake a wiser woman to-morrow morning."

The morning came. A little before noon the arrival of the pony-chaise
was announced at the door, and a letter was brought in to me from Mrs.
Macallan.

"I have no right to control your movements," my mother-in-law wrote. "I
send the chaise to Mr. Benjamin's house; and I sincerely trust that you
will not take your place in it. I wish I could persuade you, Valeria,
how truly I am your friend. I have been thinking about you anxiously
in the wakeful hours of the night. _How_ anxiously, you will understand
when I tell you that I now reproach myself for not having done more than
I did to prevent your unhappy marriage. And yet, what more I could have
done I don't really know. My son admitted to me that he was courting you
under an assumed name, but he never told me what the name was. Or who
you were, or where your friends lived. Perhaps I ought to have taken
measures to find this out. Perhaps, if I had succeeded, I ought to have
interfered and enlightened you, even at the sad sacrifice of making an
enemy of my own son. I honestly thought I did my duty in expressing my
disapproval, and in refusing to be present at the marriage. Was I too
easily satisfied? It is too late to ask. Why do I trouble you with an
old woman's vain misgivings and regrets? My child, if you come to any
harm, I shall feel (indirectly) responsible for it. It is this uneasy
state of mind which sets me writing, with nothing to say that can
interest you. Don't go to Dexter! The fear has been pursuing me all
night that your goi