“Mrs. Houston, the honor of no human being can possibly go out of his own keeping, or into that of another.”
The lady still bit her lip in high displeasure; but a glance at the pale, pensive face, and mourning dress of the orphan girl, a sudden recollection of her dead mother, a reflection upon the inevitable misery that any real imprudence might bring upon that mother’s only child, perhaps modified her resentment, for in a kinder tone she said:
“Margaret Helmstedt, you are on the brink of a frightful precipice! pause! confide to me the nature of the acquaintance subsisting between yourself and that strange young man, whom you had evidently known previous to your meeting yesterday morning. Is he the person to whom you wrote those mysterious letters? Is he the same whose visit to the island caused your poor mother such keen distress? Was it the dread of your continued intimacy, and possible union with such an unadmissible person, that constrained her to betroth you to Ralph, and consign you to my care? Speak, Margaret! It may be in my power to help and save you!”
Margaret trembled through all her frame, but answered firmly:
“Dear Mrs. Houston, I thank you for your kindness, but—I have nothing to say!”
“Margaret; I adjure you by the memory of your dead mother, speak! explain!”
She might have replied, “And in the name of my dear, mother, I repudiate your adjuration!” But fearing to give the slightest clue, or in the least degree to compromise the memory of her who slept beneath the old oak beside the waves, she answered:
“Even so adjured, I can only repeat, that I have no explanation to make, Mrs. Houston.”
“Then I will delay no longer. I will write to Ralph!” exclaimed Mrs. Houston, indignantly rising and leaving the room.
“Oh! mother! mother!” The wailing voice of the girl was smothered in her spread hands, and in her thick, disheveled hair as she cast herself upon the floor.