educed to!" she confided to the last orange-tree.

Winthrop brought himself back. "I don't see any reason why you shouldn't
go to Charleston if the Doctor will take you," he said; "you must speak
to him about it."

"Well, I won't keep you; I see you want to go.--All the same, you know,
I liked you," she called after him as he went out in the sunshine.

He glanced back, smiling.

But Garda looked perfectly serious. She stood there framed in the light
green shade; "I should like _ever_ so much to go back to the time when I
first cared for you!" she said, regretfully.

Winthrop found Mrs. Rutherford much excited. Betty, tearful and
distressed, met him outside the door, and in whispered words confessed
that she had inadvertently betrayed the fact of his engagement, to dear
Katrina; "I can't imagine, though, why she should feel about it as she
does--as though it was something terrible," concluded the friend,
plucking up a little spirit at the end of her confession, and wiping her
eyes.

"She won't feel so long," said Winthrop,--"you can take comfort from
that; my engagement is broken."

"BROKEN?"

"Yes; by Garda herself, ten minutes ago." And leaving Betty to digest
this new intelligence, he went in to see his aunt.

His aunt had had herself put into an arm-chair: an arm-chair was more
impressive than a bed. "I feel very ill, Evert," she began, in a faint
voice; "I never could have believed that you would deceive me in this
way."

"Let me undeceive you, then. My engagement--for I presume it is that you
are thinking of--is broken."

"Did _you_ break it, Evert?" pursued Aunt Katrina, still in affliction.

"No, Miss Thorne broke it. Ten minutes ago."

"A forward minx!" said the lady, veering suddenly to heat.

"It is done, at any rate. I suppose you are glad."

"Of course I am glad. But I should be gladder still if I thought I
should never see her face again!"

"That is apropos--she is anxious to go to Charleston."

"Let her go," said Aunt Katrina, with majesty.

"She is afraid Margaret will object."

"_I_ shall object if she stays! But oh, Evert, how could you have been
caught in such a trap as that, by a perfectly unknown, shallow,
mercenary girl?"

"Unknown--for the present, yes; shallow--I am not prepared to say; but
mercenary? If she were mercenary, would she have let me off? Would she
have broken the engagement herself, as she did ten minutes ago?"

"I wish you wouldn't keep repeating that 'ten