'But how is it to be?' broke in Alda crossly. 'You and Felix seem to be encouraging him to come dangling here, when we all agreed that Ferdinand must keep away in Felix's absence, though matters are in such a different state.'
'So I told him, dear Alda,' gently said Wilmet; 'but he declared he would bring his sisters, or poor Mrs. Harewood herself, if nothing else would satisfy me: and what could I do, after all their kindness?'
'Umph!' muttered Alda; 'they are a queer set.'
'Now, Alda,' said Wilmet earnestly, 'you must not talk without knowing. Till I went there, I never understood how much goodness and principle there could be without my stiffness and particularity. I know I have often been very unnecessarily disagreeable and disapproving, and I hope I am shaken out of it in time.'
'Dear Mettie, no one is like you,' cried Cherry, with a little effusion, stretching out her hand, and laying it on her sister's shoulder. 'Oh, if we had not all been so vile while you were away!'
'It would not have made any difference, my dear! It would be impossible to leave Felix without help. And think of Theodore!'
Alda muttered something, that no one would hear, about asylums; and the tell-tale tears coming again, Wilmet sprang up, and bending down to kiss Cherry, declared in her most authoritative voice that nothing should be said to the younger children, nor to any one out of the house; then picked up the tea-cups, and carried them in.
Excitements were, however, not yet over for the day. A telegram was put into Alda's hands, containing the words—
'A.T. is an unmitigated brute. I sail for N.Y. to-night. All will be right when I come back.'
The mysterious hint restored Alda at once to all the privileges of the reigning heroine!