And when the visitors had all departed, and Mr. Helmstedt was alone with his wife, he took her white, transparent hand, and gazing mournfully into her emaciated, but still brilliantly beautiful face, said:
“Marguerite, will you have mercy on yourself? Will you save your life? Will you, in a word, make the revelation I require as your only possible ransom, so that I may take you where you may recover your health? Will you, Marguerite?”
She shook her head in sorrowful pride.
“Have you so mistaken me after all these years, Philip? And do you think that the revelation I could not make for your dear sake six years ago I can make now for my own? No, Philip, no.”
And again, for a time, the harassing subject was dropped.
Mrs. Helmstedt had one dear consolation; a lone angel was ever at her side, her little daughter “Margaret,” as her Anglo-Saxon father preferred to write the name. As the lady’s health temporarily rallied, her sweetest employment was that of educating this child.
Margaret had inherited little of her mother’s transcendent beauty and genius; but the shadow of that mother’s woe lay lingering in her eyes—those large, soft, dark eyes, so full of earnest tenderness. Through the dreariest seasons in all the long and dreary years of her confinement—those desolate seasons when Mr. Helmstedt was varying the scene of his life at Baltimore, Annapolis, or some other point to which business or inclination called him; and Nellie was enjoying the society of her friends in Richmond, and Marguerite was left for weary weeks and months, companionless on the island, this loving child was her sweetest comforter. And little Margaret, with her premature and thoughtful sympathy, better liked to linger near her sad-browed mother, than even to leave the isle; but sweet as was this companionship, Mrs. Helmstedt, with a mother’s unselfish affection, was solicitous that Margaret should enjoy the company of friends of her own age, and frequently sent her, under the charge of Ralph or Franky Houston, to pass a day at Rockbridge parsonage with Grace Wellworth, the clergyman’s child, or a week at Plover’s Point with Clare Hartley, the doctor’s daughter; and still more frequently she invited one or both of those little girls to spend a few days on the island.
But at length there came a time, when Margaret was about twelve years of age, that she lost the society of her young friends. Grace Wellworth and Clare Hartley were sent up together to Richmond, under the charge of Colonel and Mrs. Houston, who were going thither on a visit, to enter a first-class boarding school, and thus Margaret was left companionless; and for a little while suffered a depression of spirits, strange and sad in one so young.
Mrs. Helmstedt saw this with alarm, and dreaded the farther effect of isolation and solitude upon her loving and sensitive child.
“She must not suffer through my fate. Dear as she is, she must leave me. The sins of her parents shall not be visited upon her innocent head,” said Marguerite to herself. (Alas! Mrs. Helmstedt, how could you prevent the action of that natural and certain consequence?) And that same day, being in her own special parlor, of the bay window, with Mr. Helmstedt, she said: