how dare you?"

"Well, mamma, if it were wicked, why didn't you warn me?" Beth said.
"How was I to know?"

"Your womanly instincts ought to have taught you better."

Unfortunately for this theory, all Beth's womanly instincts set in the
opposite direction. Her father's ardent temperament warred in her with
Aunt Victoria's Puritan principles, and there was no telling as yet
which would prevail.

Beth made no reply to that last assertion of her mother's, but
remained half sitting on the table, with her feet stretched out in
front of her, and her hands supporting her on either side, which
brought her shoulders up to her ears. It was a most inelegant
attitude, and peculiarly exasperating to Mrs. Caldwell.

"Oh, you wicked--you bad--you _abandoned_ girl!" she exclaimed, losing
her temper altogether. "My heart is _broken_ with you. Go to your
room, and stay there. I feel as if I could never endure the sight of
you again."

Beth gathered herself together slowly, and strolled away with an air
of indifference; but as soon as she found herself alone in her own
room with the door shut, she dropped on her knees and lifted her
clasped hands to heaven in an agony of remorse for having tormented
her mother, and in despair about that wretched engagement. "O Lord,
what am I to do?" she said; "what am I to do?" If she could make up
her mind once for all either way, she would be satisfied; it was this
miserable state of indecision that was unendurable.

Presently in the room below, she thought she heard her mother sob aloud.
She listened, breathless. Her mother was sobbing. Beth jumped up and
opened her door. What should she do? Her unhappy mother--heart-broken,
indeed. What a life hers was--a life of hard privation, of suffering
most patiently borne, of the utmost self-denial for her children's sake,
of loss, of loneliness, of bitter disappointment! First her husband
taken, then her dearest child; her ungrateful boys not over-kind to her;
and now this last blow dealt her by Beth, just when the prospect of
getting her well married was bringing a gleam of happiness into her
mother's life. The piteous sobs continued. Beth stole downstairs, bent
on atoning in her own person by any sacrifice for all the sorrows, no
matter by whom occasioned, which she felt were culminating in this final
outburst of grief. She found her mother standing beside the high
old-fashioned mantelpiece, leaning her poor head against it.

"Mamma," Beth cried,