Mr. Helmstedt turned and looked upon his youthful daughter. He had scarcely looked at her since his return. Although he had met her with affection and kissed her with tenderness, so absorbed had he been in his bitter, remorseful grief, that he scarcely fixed his eyes upon her, or noticed that in his two years’ absence she had grown from childhood into womanhood. But now, when without hesitating bashfulness, when with serious self-possession, she spoke of her betrothal, he turned and gazed upon her.
She was looking so grave and womanly in her deep mourning robe, her plainly banded hair and her thoughtful, earnest, fervent countenance, whence youthful lightness seemed banished forever. There was a profounder depth of thought and feeling under that young face than her great sorrow alone could have produced—as though strange suffering and severe reflection, searching trial, and terrible struggle, and the knowledge, experience and wisdom that they bring, had prematurely come upon that young soul.
Her father contemplated her countenance with an increasing wonder and interest. His voice, in addressing her, unconsciously assumed a tone of respect; and when in rising to leave the spot he offered her his arm, the deferential courtesy of the gentleman blended in his manner with the tender affection of the father. And afterward, in the presence of others, he always called her, or spoke of her, as Miss Helmstedt, an example which all others were, of course, expected to follow.
The next day Mr. Helmstedt departed for the island. Margaret was anxious to accompany her father thither, but he declined her offer, expressing his desire and necessity to be alone. He went to the island, to the scene of his high-spirited, broken-hearted wife’s long, half-voluntary, half-enforced confinement; he went to indulge in solitude his bitter, remorseful grief.
He remained there a fortnight, inhabiting the vacant rooms, wandering about amid the deserted scenes, once so full, so insinct, so alive with Marguerite De Lancie’s bright, animating and inspiring presence—now only haunted by her memory. He seemed to derive a strange, morose satisfaction in thus torturing his own conscience-stricken soul.
Once, from Marguerite’s favorite parlor, were heard the sounds of deep, convulsive weeping and sobbing; and old Hapzibah, who was the listener upon this occasion, fearing discovery, hurried away in no less astonishment than consternation. And this was the only instance in the whole course of his existence upon which Mr. Helmstedt was ever suspected of such unbending.
At the end of a fortnight, having appointed an overseer to take charge of the island plantation, Mr. Helmstedt returned to Plover’s Point.
This was on a Saturday.
The next day, Sunday, his young daughter Margaret formally united with the Protestant Episcopal Church, over which Mr. Wellworth had charge, and received her first communion from his venerable hands.
And on Monday morning Mr. Helmstedt conveyed his daughter to Buzzard’s Bluff, where he placed her in charge of her prospective mother-in-law. The same day, calling Margaret into an unoccupied parlor, he said to her: