old," answered Evert Winthrop
(but he looked as if he might have, if not a judgment, at least an
opinion); "I know her too slightly."

"Yet you have seen a good deal of her since you came back from Europe,"
remarked his aunt.

"I have seen enough to know that she is, at least, a very good niece to
you," he answered.

His feeling against Margaret Harold was strong, it was founded upon some
of the deepest beliefs of his nature. But these beliefs were his own, in
their very essence they were personal, private, he could not have
discussed them with any one; especially would he never have discussed
them with his aunt, because he thought that she did not, even as it was,
do full justice to Margaret Harold, and he had no wish to increase the
feeling. On the contrary, he thought that full justice should always be
scrupulously awarded to that lady, and the more scrupulously if one did
not happen to like her; he himself, for instance, did not like her; on
that very account he was careful always, so he would have said, to keep
in clear view a just estimate of the many good qualities which she
undoubtedly possessed.

In response to his suggestion that Margaret had proved herself a good
niece, Mrs. Rutherford answered, in a voice somewhat softened, "Yes, she
is very devoted to me." Her conscience seemed to stir a little, for she
went on: "Regarding my health, my personal comfort, she is certainly
most thoughtful."

Here a door within opened, and she stopped. They heard a light step
cross the floor; then a figure appeared in the long window that opened
upon the piazza.

"Ah, Margaret, is that you? You have finished the letter?" said Mrs.
Rutherford. "She has been writing to my cousins, to tell them of my safe
arrival; I did not feel equal to writing myself," she added, to
Winthrop.

He had risen to bring forward a chair. But Margaret passed him, and went
to the piazza railing, which came solidly up as high as one's elbows,
with a broad parapet to lean upon; here she stood looking at the water.

"I believe now all I have heard of this Florida moonlight," she said,
her eyes on the broad silvery expanse of the ocean, visible beyond the
low line of Patricio. She had turned her head a little as she spoke, and
perceiving that a ray from the room within was shining across Mrs.
Rutherford's face, she stepped back through the window, changed the
position of the lamp, and returned.

"Thank you, my dear; I did not know how much it w