“You are sure that is the name?” inquired the lady, in surprise.
“Yes, madam, that is the name, in a regular slanting hand. I always find a letter bearing that name in the box the moment after that old man has been seen about here, and never at any other time.”
“Very well; I thank you for your information; but mind! pray do not speak of this matter to any one but myself; for I would not like to have this subject discussed in town,” said Mrs. Houston.
“Oh, certainly not, madam! You may rely on me,” replied the young man, who, in half an hour afterward, laughed over the whole affair with a companion, both making very merry over the idea that the wealthy heiress, Miss Helmstedt, should be engaged to one lover and in private correspondence with another.
And so the ball set in motion by Nellie’s indiscretion rolled finely, never wanting a helping hand to propel it on its course; and gathered as it rolled. The rumor changed its form: the gossip became slander. And every one in the county, with the exception of Miss Helmstedt and her friends, “knew” that young lady was in “secret” correspondence with a low, disreputable sailor, whose acquaintance she had formed in some inexplicable manner, and the discovery of whose surreptitious visits to the island had been the proximate cause of her mother’s death.
Could Mrs. Houston have imagined half the evil that must accrue from her own imprudent conversation, she would have been touched with compunction; as it was, hearing nothing whatever of this injurious calumny, the guilty reveled in the rewards of “an approving conscience.” She kept her discovery of the mysterious name to herself; hinting to no one, least of all to Margaret, the extent of her knowledge upon this subject. And in order to throw the girl off her guard, she was careful never to resume the subject of the letters.
And the plan succeeded so far that Margaret continued, at intervals of three or four weeks, to send off those mysterious letters, and thus the scandal grew and strengthened. That upon such slight grounds the good name of an innocent girl should have been assailed may astonish those unacquainted with the peculiar character of a neighborhood where the conduct of woman is governed by the most stringent conventionalism, and where such stringency is made necessary by the existing fact, that the slightest eccentricity of conduct, however innocent, or even meritorious it may be, is made the ground of the gravest animadversions.
Mrs. Houston, unconscious, as I said, of the rumors abroad, and biding her time for farther discoveries, treated Margaret with great kindness. Nellie had always, of all things, desired a daughter of her own. In her attached stepchild, Franky, she felt that she had quite a son of her own, and in Margaret she would have been pleased to possess the coveted daughter. As well as her capricious temper would allow her to do so, she sought to conduct herself as a mother toward the orphan girl; at times overwhelming her with flippant caresses and puerile attentions, which she might have mistaken for “the sweet, small courtesies of life,” but which were very distasteful and unwelcome to one of Margaret Helmstedt’s profound, earnest, impassioned soul, and mournful life experiences.
The malaria of slander that filled all the air without must necessarily at last penetrate the precincts of home.
One day, a miserable, dark, drizzling day, near the last of November, Mr. Wellworth presented himself at the Bluff, and requested to see Mrs. Houston alone.