m somebody."

"Margaret!" I said, frightened at the pale anger of Ernest's
countenance.

"You dare not look me in the face and say that you do not wish to go,
Gabriella? You know you dare not."

"I desire nothing contrary to my husband's wishes."

"You are a little simpleton, then,--and I don't care what people say. It
is a sin to encourage him in such selfishness and despotism."

She laughed, but her lips curled with scorn.

Ernest took up a pearl paper-cutter from the table, and bent it, till it
broke like glass in his fingers. He did not know what he was doing.
Madge only laughed the louder. She enjoyed his anger and my trepidation.

"A pretty thing to make a scene of!" she exclaimed. "Here I come all the
way from Boston to make you a visit,--expecting you would do every thing
to make me happy, as other folks do, when friends visit them. I propose
a quiet, respectable amusement, in my own frank, go-ahead way,--and
lo!--my lord frowns, and my lady trembles, and both, occupied in
watching each other's emotions, forget they have a guest to entertain,
as well as a friend to gratify."

"You might wait till I have refused to accompany you, Miss Melville,"
said Ernest, in a cold, calm voice. "You know me incapable of such
rudeness. But I cannot allow even a lady to make such unpardonable
allusions to my domestic feelings and conduct. If a man cannot find a
sanctuary from insult in his own home, he may well bar his doors against
intrusion, and if he has the spirit of a man, he will."

"She is only jesting," said I, with a beseeching glance. "You know Madge
of old,--she never says any thing she really thinks. How can you be
excited by any remarks of hers?"

"Cousin Ernest," cried Madge, while the _laughing devil_ in her great
black eyes tried to shrink into a hiding-place, "have you not manliness
to forgive me, when the rash humor which my mother gave me makes me
forgetful?"

She held out her hand with an ardent desire for reconciliation. She
found she had a spirit to contend with, stronger than she imagined; and
for the moment she was subdued.

"Not your mother, Margaret," replied Ernest, taking the offered hand
with a better grace than I anticipated. "She is gentle and womanly, like
my own. I know not whence you derived your wickedness."

"It is all original. I claim the sole credit of it. Father and mother
both saints. I am a moral tangent, flying off between them. Well, we are
friends again; are we not?"