His voice and manner startled Ethelyn, but did not prepare her for what followed after she had “dropped her finery” and was standing by her husband.

“Ethelyn,” he began, and his eyes did not move from the blazing fire, “it is time we came to an understanding about Washington.  I have talked with mother, whose age certainly entitles her opinion to some consideration, and she thinks that for you to go to Washington this winter would not only be improper, but also endanger your life; consequently, I hope you will readily see the propriety of remaining quietly at home where mother can care for you, and see that you are not at all imprudent.  It would break my heart if anything happened to my darling wife, or—­” he finished the sentence in a whisper, for he was not yet accustomed to speaking of the great hope he had in expectancy.

He was looking at Ethelyn now, and the expression of her face startled and terrified him, it was so strange and terrible.

“Not go to Washington!” and her livid lips quivered with passion, while her eyes burned like coals of fire.  “I stay here all this long, dreary winter with your mother!  Never, Richard, never!  I’ll die before I’ll do that.  It is all—­” she did not finish the sentence, for she would not say, “It is all I married you for”; she was too much afraid of Richard for that, and so she hesitated, but looked at him intently to see if he was in earnest.

She knew he was at last—­knew that neither tears, nor reproaches, nor bitter scorn could avail to carry her point, for she tried them all, even to violent hysterics, which brought Mrs. Markham, senior, into the field and made the matter ten times worse.  Had she stayed away Richard might have yielded, for he was frightened at the storm he had invoked; but Richard was passive in his mother’s hands, and listened complacently while in stronger, plainer language than he had used she repeated in substance all he had said about the impropriety of Ethelyn’s mingling with the gay throng at Washington.  Immodesty, Mrs. Markham called it, with sundry reflections upon the time when she was young, and what young married women did then.  And while she talked poor Ethelyn lay upon the lounge writhing with pain and passion, wishing that she could die, and feeling in her heart that she hated the entire Markham race, from Richard down to the innocent Andy, who heard of the quarrel going on between his mother and Ethelyn, and crept cautiously to the door of their room, wishing so much that he could mediate between them.

But this was a matter beyond Andy’s ken.  He could not even find a petition in his prayer-book suited to that occasion.  Mr. Townsend had assured him that it would meet every emergency; but for once Mr. Townsend was at fault, for with the sound of Ethelyn’s angry voice ringing in his ears, Andy lighted his tallow candle and creeping up to his chamber knelt down by his wooden chair and sought among the general