e go north, I shall place
her with Madame Martel."

"It's really pitiful to think how unhappy she will be," said Mrs.
Rutherford, the next day, shaking her head prophetically. "Poor
child--poor little southern flower--to take her away from this lovely
climate, and force her to live at the cold North--to take her away from
a real home, where they all love her, and put her with Madame Martel!
You must have a far sterner nature than _I_ have, Margaret, to be able
to do it."

To this Margaret made no answer.

"I really wish you would tell me why you rate your own influence over
that of everybody else," remarked Mrs. Rutherford on another occasion.
She spoke impersonally, as though it were simply a curiosity she felt.
"Have you had some experience in the management of young girls that I
know nothing about?"

"No," replied Margaret.

"Yet you undertake it without hesitation! You have more confidence in
your powers than I should have in mine, I confess. How do you know what
she may do? Depend upon it, she won't have our ideas at all. You are a
quiet sort of person, but she may be quite the reverse, and then what a
prospect! She will be talked about, such girls always are; she may even
get into the papers."

"Not for a year or two yet, I think," answered Margaret, smiling.

The next day, "It would be so _easy_ to do it now," observed the
handsome aunt; "it almost seems like a tempting of Providence to neglect
such an opportunity." (Mrs. Rutherford always lived on intimate terms
with Providence.) "You could keep up your interest in her, send her down
books, and even a governess for six months or so, if you wished to be
very punctilious; all the people here want Garda to stay--they cannot
bear to give her up; you would be doing them a kindness by yielding.
They are really fond of her, and she is fond of them; of course you
can't pretend that she cares for _you_ in that way?"

"Oh no, I don't pretend," replied Margaret.

"You carry her off without it!"

The next advance was on another line. "What are you going to do when she
is through school, Margaret?" demanded the inquirer, with interested
amiability. "She'll have to see something, go somewhere--you can't shut
her up; and who is going to chaperon her? I am an invalid, you know, and
you yourself are much too young. You must remember, my dear, that you
are a young and pretty woman." (Aunt Katrina had evidently been driven
to her best shot.)

But though this, or a s