“I had a letter from your aunt Maria this morning,” she said, with an assumed indifference.

“Yes; I noticed the Amity post-mark and Aunt Maria’s writing,” said Maria.

Ida looked at her step-daughter, and for the first time in her life she hesitated.  “I have something to say to you, Maria,” she said, finally, in a nervous voice, so different from her usual one that Maria looked at her in surprise.  She waited for her to speak further.

“The Voorhees are going abroad,” she said, abruptly.

“Are they?”

“Yes, they sail in three weeks—­three weeks from next Saturday.”

Maria still waited, and still her step-mother hesitated.  At last, however, she spoke out boldly and defiantly.

“Mrs. Voorhees’s sister, Miss Angelica Wyatt, is going with them,” said she.  “Mrs. Voorhees is not going to take Paul; she will leave him with her mother.  She says travelling is altogether too hard on children.”

“Does she?”

“Yes; and so there are three in the party.  Miss Wyatt has her state-room to herself, and—­they have asked me to go.  The passage will not cost me anything.  All the expense I shall have will be my board, and travelling fares abroad.”

Maria looked at her step-mother, who visibly shrank before her, then looked at her with defiant eyes.

“Then you are going?” she said.

“Yes.  I have made up my mind that it is a chance which Providence has put in my way, and I should be foolish, even wicked, to throw it away, especially now.  I am not well.  Your dear father’s death has shattered my nerves.”

Maria looked, with a sarcasm which she could not repress, at her step-mother’s blooming face, and her rounded form.

“I have consulted Mrs. Voorhees’s physician, in New York,” said Ida quickly, for she understood the look.  “I consulted him when I went to the city with Mrs. Voorhees last Monday, and he says I am a nervous wreck, and he will not answer for the consequences unless I have a complete change of scene.”

“What about Evelyn?” asked Maria, in a dry voice.

“I wrote to your aunt Maria about her.  The letter I got this morning was in reply to mine.  She writes very brusquely—­she is even ill-mannered—­but she says she is perfectly willing for Evelyn to go there and board.  I will pay four dollars a week—­that is a large price for a child—­and I knew you would love to have her.”

“Yes, I should; I don’t turn my back upon my own flesh and blood,” Maria said, abruptly.  “I guess I shall be glad to have her, poor little thing! with her father dead and her mother forsaking her.”

“I think you must be very much like your aunt Maria,” said Ida, in a cool, disagreeable voice.  “I would fight against it, if I were you, Maria.  It is not interesting, such a way as hers.  It is especially not interesting to gentlemen.  Gentlemen never like girls who speak so quickly and emphatically.  They like girls to be gentle.”