the Reverend
Walter Nugent, who, though the living he held was but a small one,
contrived to rear and educate his niece as his own child. He had only
allowed her to leave him and become a governess on the assurance of the
village physician that her health was seriously impaired, and that a sea
voyage and complete change of scene would prove the best and surest of
restoratives. But the pained though manly tone of the letter in which he
replied to Mrs. Rutherford's inquiries had prepossessed that warm-hearted,
high-minded lady most strongly against her future daughter-in-law. "I
loved Marion always as though she were my own child," wrote Mr. Nugent,
"and I cannot but look upon her total neglect of me since her arrival in
America as being wholly inexcusable. She has never even written me one
line since her departure, and I learned of her safe arrival only by the
newspapers. I can but infer from her obstinate and persistent silence that
she wishes to sever all ties between herself and me, and I have resigned
myself to the prospect of a lonely and cheerless old age. I trust that she
may be happy in the brilliant marriage which, you say, she is about to
make, and I can assure her that her old uncle will never disturb her in
her new prosperity."

Mrs. Rutherford had one long, stormy interview with her eldest son, and
learning therein that his determination to marry Miss Nugent was fixed and
unalterable, she had with commendable wisdom accepted the situation, and
resolved to so order the conduct of herself and her relatives as to give
the scandalous world no room for that contemptuous pity and abundant
gossip which an open rupture between herself and her son would doubtless
have occasioned.

The manner of the wooing had been in this wise: John Archer, a sober,
staid gentleman of great wealth, was Clement Rutherford's most intimate
friend, and naturally, when the Archers moved into their new and splendid
villa at Newport, Clement was invited to spend a few weeks with them--an
invitation which he readily accepted. A few days after his arrival, Mrs.
Archer, who was a pretty, lively little coquette, not in the least sobered
by some thirteen years of married life, offered to drive him out in her
little phaeton. "John has just given me a new pair of ponies," she
said--"such perfect beauties and so gentle that I long to drive them." So
the pretty, stylish equipage, with its fair driver and faultless
appointments, made its first appea