n, too--why, I cannot think of doing it. If you
will just go and sit with him sometimes, and read to him a little, it will
be an absolute charity to me. I'll see that Alice and Emily do not get
into any mischief."

Which, considering that the young ladies in question were, one twelve, the
other ten years of age, and both much addicted to flirtation and dancing
the "German," was rather a rash promise and inconsiderately made.

So Miss Nugent was definitely installed as reader and _garde malade_ in
general, and Clement Rutherford soon learned to await her coming with
impatience and to welcome her with delight. All his life long will he
remember those summer days, when her voice and the low plash of the
far-off ocean waves wove themselves together into music as she read, and
when the blue splendors of her lustrous eyes lent a new meaning to the
poet's story as it flowed in melodious verses from her lips. Then came a
day when the book was laid aside, and the impassioned utterances of poetry
gave place to the more prosaic but not less fervent accents of a
newly-awakened passion. Cold, silent and morose as Clement Rutherford had
always been, it had so happened that but few women had ever attempted to
attract him, notwithstanding his wealth and social position; and the
interested motives of those few had been so apparent that he had been
repelled and disgusted, instead of being fascinated, by their wiles; so
that Miss Nugent's grace and beauty and syren charms proved all too potent
for his unoccupied though icy heart to resist; and thus it chanced that
the day before Mr. Rutherford left Newport he astonished his hostess by
requesting a private interview with her, and therein announcing his
engagement to her governess.

"You could have knocked me down with a feather," Mrs. Archer said
afterward to an intimate friend. "I never should have suspected that such
a quiet, stupid man as he was would fall in love in that ridiculous kind
of a way. Good gracious! how indignant old Mrs. Rutherford will be! and I
shall be blamed for the whole affair, no doubt. I wish John had never
brought the man here--I never _did_ like him; and then, too, it is so
provoking to lose Miss Nugent just now, while we are at Newport. Of course
I can find no one to replace her till we return to New York. Well, I
always _was_ an unlucky little woman."

The marriage took place in the latter part of September, only a few weeks
after the engagement had been fir