“Silverton, May 9th.

“Mr. Wilford Cameron:  I give you credit for the kindest of motives in sending the check, which I now return to you, with my compliments.  We are not as poor as you suppose, and would almost deem it sacrilege to let another than ourselves provide for Katy so long as she is ours.  And furthermore, that Mrs. Ryan’s services will not be needed, so it is not worth her while to make a journey here for nothing.  Yours,

“Helen Lennox.”

Helen felt better after this letter had gone, wondering often how it would be received, and if Wilford would be angry.  She hoped he would, and his mother too.  “The idea of sending that Ryan woman to us, as if we did not know anything!” and Helen’s lip curled scornfully as she thus denounced the Ryan woman, whose trunk was all packed with paper patterns and devices of various kinds when the letter arrived saying she was not needed.  Being a woman of few words, she quietly unpacked her patterns and went back to the work she was engaged upon when Mrs. Cameron proposed her going into the country.  Juno, on the contrary, flew into a violent passion to think their first friendly advances should be thus received.  Bell laughed immoderately, saying she rather liked Helen Lennox’s spirit, and almost wished her brother had chosen her instead of the other, who, she presumed, was a milk and water thing, even if Mrs. Woodhull did extol her so highly.  Mrs. Cameron felt the rebuff keenly, wincing under it, and saying “that Helen Lennox must be a very rude, ill-bred girl,” and hoping her son would draw the line of division between his wife and her family so tightly that the sister could never pass over it.  She had received the news of her son’s engagement without opposition, for she knew the time for that was passed.  Wilford would marry Katy Lennox, and she must make the best of it, so she offered no word of remonstrance, but, when they were alone, she said to him:  “Did you tell her?  Does she know it all?”

“No, mother,” and the old look of pain came back into Wilford’s face.  “I meant to do so, and I actually began, but she stopped me short, saying she did not wish to hear my faults, she would rather find them out herself.  Away from her it is very easy to think what I will do, but when the trial comes I find it hard, we have kept it so long; but I shall tell her yet; not till after we are married though, and I have made her love me even more than she does now.  She will not mind it then.  I shall take her where I first met Genevra, and there I will tell her.  Is that right?”

“Yes, if you think so,” Mrs. Cameron replied.