“One Sabbath when grandmother supposed I was saying my prayers in the church, which I had left home to attend, I stole away to our trysting place in a neighbouring wood, that bordered a small stream.  Oh, the bitter fruits of that filial disobedience!  The accursed harvest that ripened for me, that it seems I shall never have done garnering!  Clandestine interviews concealed, because I knew prohibition would follow discovery!  I am a melancholy monument of the sin of deception; and that child who deliberately snatches the reins of control from the hands where God decrees them, and dares substitute her will and judgment for those of parents or guardians, drives inevitably on to ruin, and will live to curse her folly.  That day Peleg was fishing, and surprised us at the moment when Cuthbert was bending down to kiss me.  Having heard all that passed, he waited till evening, and finding me in the little garden attached to our house, he savagely upbraided me for preferring Cuthbert’s society to his, claimed me as his, by right of devotion; and when I spurned him indignantly, and forbade him to speak to me in future, he became infuriated, rushed into the cottage, and disclosed all that he had discovered.”

“I knew it!  I felt assured you must always have loathed him!” exclaimed Regina, with kindling eyes; and catching her mother’s dress as she passed beside her.

“Why, my darling?”

“Because he was coarse, brutal!  When he dared to call you ‘Minnie,’ if I had been a man I would have strangled him!”

Her mother kissed her, and answered sadly: 

“And yet he loved me infinitely better than the man for whom I repulsed, nay insulted him.  He was poor, unpolished, but at that time he would have died to defend me from harm.  It was reserved for his courtly, high-bred, elegant rival to betray the trust he won!  The storm that followed Peleg’s revelation was fierce, and availing herself of his jealous surveillance, grandmother allowed me no more stolen interviews.  After a fortnight, Cuthbert came one day and demanded permission to see me, alleging that we were betrothed, and that he would give satisfactory explanations of his conduct.  Grandmother was obdurate, but unfortunately I ventured in, and, seizing me in his arms, he swore that all the world should not separate us.  To her he explained that his father desired him to marry an heiress who lived not far from the paternal mansion, and possessed immense estates, upon which the covetous eyes of the Laurances’ had long been fixed; but until he completed his collegiate course matters must be delayed.  He protested that he could love no one but me, and solemnly vowed that as soon as freed by his majority from parental control he would make me his wife.  I was sufficiently insane to believe it all; but grandmother was wiser, and sternly interdicted his visits.

“A month went by, during which Peleg persecuted me with professions of love, and offers of marriage.  How I detested him, and by contrast how godlike appeared my refined, polished, proud young lover!  At length Cuthbert wrote to me, entrusting the letter to a college chum Gerbert Audre, but Peleg’s Argus scrutiny could not be baffled, and again I was detected.