“We should indeed be very badly off without you, Mr. Houston; but I do not see what compensation for a dull life you can find in the company of a little island rustic.”
“‘A little island rustic,’ my dear lady. I have lived in the great world where there are more false jewels than real ones, and I know how to prize a real pearl that I find amid the sea!”
“Do not waste poetry on my little girl, Ralph Houston.”
“Again! ‘little girl!’ Well, I suppose she is a little girl, scarce fourteen years of age, just in her dawn of existence! Yet the dawn is very beautiful! and we, who are up early enough, love to watch it warm and brighten to the perfect day,” he said, bending a grave, sweet look upon the downcast face of Margaret.
To break up this conversation and relieve her little daughter’s embarrassment, Mrs. Helmstedt touched the bell and ordered breakfast to be served directly in that parlor; and it was speedily brought thither.
Spring at length opened, and the recluse family of the island were once more in communication with the outside world.
Old Colonel and Mrs. Compton paid a visit of a day and night to Mrs. Helmstedt, and again, although they knew it to be a mere form, renewed their oft-repeated entreaties that their hostess would return their visit.
The Wellworths came and spent a couple of days, and carried off Margaret to pass a week at the parsonage. And during the absence of the young girl, it should be observed, that Ralph Houston did not slacken in the least degree his visits to the island, and his friendly attentions to the solitary lady there.
Soon after Margaret returned home, the doctor and Mrs. Hartley came to the isle to spend a day, and when they departed took the maiden with them to Plover’s Point to spend a fortnight. Truth to tell, the young girl did not like to leave her mother; but Mrs. Helmstedt, ever fearful of the effect of too much isolation and solitude upon the sensitive nature of her daughter, firmly insisted upon her going.
Ralph Houston was ubiquitous. He did not fail in daily visits to the island, and yet two or three times a week he contrived to be twenty miles up the river at Plover’s Point. There are no secrets in a country neighborhood. The attachment of Ralph Houston, the heir of Buzzard’s Bluff, to the little island maiden was no secret, though a great mystery to all.