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 spent, were matters of less consequence, apparently, than what he was now.  He had been wild at college, as other boys had been, she learned; he had tried the cattle-business in the West, she was told; but there had been a quarrel with his father, a reconciliation, a devoted mother, a long sojourn abroad,—­Heidelberg,—­a sudden summons to return, the death of the father, and then the management of a valuable estate fell to the son.  There were other children, brother and sisters, three in all, but Steven was the first-born and the mother’s glory.  She was with him at the sea-side, and the first thing that moved Nellie Travers to like him was his devotion to that white-haired woman who seemed so happy in his care.  Between that mother and Mrs. Rayner there had speedily sprung up an acquaintance.  She had vastly admired Nellie, and during the first