should be sufficient to elicit the defence you crave."

"You are in the right, perhaps!" But Mrs. Sutton had looked
miserably discontented. "Yet to be frank with you, Rosa, Winston is
not apt to be conciliatory in his measures when he takes it into his
head that the family honor is assailed. I am afraid he has written
haughtily, if not insolently, to poor Frederic."

Rosa had no doubt of this, even while she answered, "Neither
haughtiness nor downright insolence would prevent a man who has so
much at stake as has Mr. Chilton, from taking instant steps to
re-establish himself in the respect of the family he desires to
enter. This is a very delicate matter--take what view of it we may.
Hadn't you better wait a few days before you interfere? Nothing can
be lost--something may be gained by prudent delay."

"And I suppose Winston WOULD be very much displeased at my
officiousness, as he would term it," had been Mrs. sutton's
reluctant concession to her young guest's discreet counsels. "But it
is very hard to remain quiet, and see everything going to
destruction about one!"

She had evidently reconsidered her resolution to let things take
their wrong-headed course, and in virtue of her prerogatives as
match-maker and mender, had thrust her oar into the very muddy
whirlpool boiling about the bark of her darling's happiness.

Rosa wrought out this chain of sequences, with many other links,
stretching far past present exigences and possibilities, ere Mabel's
figure disappeared behind the shoulder of the hill rising beyond the