With a stately bow Mrs. Van Buren took the letter and hastily read it through, her lip quivering a little and her eyelids growing moist as Ethie described the dreariness of that dreadful day when “Aunt Van Buren came up from Boston and broke her heart.”  And as she read how much poor Ethie had loved Frank, the cold, proud woman would have given all she had if the past could be undone and Ethie restored to her just as she was that summer nine years ago, when she came from the huckleberry hills and stood beneath the maples.  With a strange obtuseness peculiar to some people who have seen their dearest plans come to naught, she failed to ascribe the trouble to herself, but charged it all to Richard.  He was the one in fault; and by the time the letter was finished the Bigelow blood was at a boiling pitch, and for a polished lady, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, of Boston, raised her voice pretty high as she asked:  “Did you presume, sir, to think that my son—­mine—­a married man—­would make an appointment with Ethie, a married woman?  You must have a strange misconception of the manner in which he was brought up!  But it is all of a piece with the rest of your abominable treatment of Ethelyn.  I wonder the poor girl stayed with you as long as she did.  Think of it, Barbara!  Accused her of going to meet Frank by appointment, and then locked her up to keep her at home, and she a Bigelow!”

This was the first inkling Aunt Barbara had of what was in the letter.  She was, however, certain that Frank was in some way involved in the matter, and anxious to know the worst, she said, beseechingly: 

“Tell me something, do.  I can’t read it, for my eyes are dim-like to-night.”

They were full of unshed tears—­the kind old eyes, which did not grow one whit sterner or colder as Mrs. Van Buren explained, to some extent, what was in the letter; reading a little, telling a little, and skipping a little where Frank was especially concerned, until Aunt Barbara had a pretty correct idea of the whole.  Matters had been worse than she supposed, Ethie more unhappy, and knowing her as she did, she was not surprised that at the last she ran away; but she did not say so—­she merely sat grieved and helpless, while her sister took up the cudgels in Ethelyn’s defense, and, attacking Richard at every point, left him no quarter at all.  She did not pretend that Ethie was faultless or perfect, she said, but surely, if mortal ever had just provocation for leaving her husband, she had.

“Her marriage was a great mistake,” she said; “and I must say, Mr. Markham, that you did very wrong to take her where you did without a word of preparation.  You ought to have told her what she was to expect; then, if she chose to go, very well.  But neither she nor I had any idea of the reality; and the change must have been terrible to her.  For my part, I can conceive of nothing worse than to be obliged to live with people whom even sister Barbara called ‘Hottentots,’ when she came home from Iowa.”