ake a hen-coop--that is, if you should happen to have hens, and I am
sure I hope you would, because at the North, they tell me--"

But here Mrs. Thorne bore down upon her. "And did you suppose,
Betty--were you capable of supposing--that Edgarda and I were thinking
of _living_ at the North?"

"I don't know what I'm capable of," answered Betty, laughing
good-humoredly; "Mr. Carew never knew either. But you're really a
northerner after all, Mrs. Thorne; and so it didn't seem so unlikely."

Mrs. Thorne had called her Betty, but she did not address Mrs. Thorne as
Melissa in return. No one had called Mrs. Thorne Melissa (Melissa
Whiting had been the name of her maiden days) since she had entered the
manorial family to which she now belonged. Her husband had called her
"Blue-eyes" (he had admired her very much, principally because she was
so small and fair); the Old Madam had unfailingly designated her by the
Spanish equivalent for "madam my niece-in-law," which was very
imposing--in the Old Madam's tone. To every one else she was Mistress
Thorne, and nothing less than Mistress Thorne; the title seemed to
belong to every inch of her straight little back, to be visible even in
the arrangement of her bonnet-strings.

Madam my niece-in-law now addressed herself to answering Betty. "When I
married my dear Edgar, Betty, I became a Thorne, I think I may say,
without affectation, a thorough one; no other course was open to me,
upon entering a family of such distinction; Edgarda, therefore is Thorne
and Duero, she is nothing else. Gracias-a-Dios will continue to be our
home; we could not permanently establish ourselves anywhere, I think,
save on the--the strand, where her forefathers have lived, and died,
with so much eminence and distinction."

"Well, I'm sure I am very glad to hear it," answered Betty, cordially.
"We are all so fond of Garda that we should miss her dreadfully if she
were to be away long, though of course we can't expect to monopolize her
so completely as we have done; she'll be going before long, you know, to
that bourne from which--"

"Oh, Betty," interrupted Mrs. Rutherford, throwing up her white hands,
"what horrors you _do_ say!"

"I didn't mean it," exclaimed Betty, in great distress, the tears rising
in her honest eyes; "I didn't mean anything of the sort, dear Mistress
Thorne, I beg you to believe it; I meant 'She stood at the altar, with
flowers on her brow'--indeed I did." And much overcome by her ow