The rigid ideas of female propriety
which General Harrington enforced in his family, had
been greatly outraged that day. This well-regulated
home was thrown into disorder by the unaccountable
absence of his wife and Lina from the tea-table.
He had followed his wife to the bank of the river,
and with a feeling of quiet indignation had watched
her rowing her own boat down the stream like a wild
gipsy. The gathering storm and the danger she
was in scarcely impressed him, but the impropriety
of the thing outraged all his fastidiousness.
Still he was glad to have her away
for the brief time that he was in the hills, and but
for her long absence this escapade on the river might
have been forgiven.
A solitary evening, added to these
causes of discontent, had greatly ruffled the general’s
equanimity of temper, and when his wife appeared deep
in the night, her clothes in disorder, her hair disarranged,
and her face pale as death, he felt her return in
this state as a positive insult to his house.
“Madam,” he said, with
that quiet irony which was the gift of his cold nature,
“it is rather late, and your toilet somewhat
disarranged for the presence of gentlemen; allow me
to lead you to a mirror.” It was not necessary;
Mabel had seen herself reflected in the great oval
glass opposite, and shrunk back, shocked both by her
appearance and the cold insult to which it had given
rise.
James Harrington remained silent,
but his eyes grew bright with indignation, while Ralph
flung one arm around his mother’s waist, and
turned his bright face upon the general.
“My mother’s life has
been in peril she comes back to us, father,
almost cold from the dead.”
“Indeed!” said the general
with a look of cold surprise. “Surely, madam,
you did not remain out in the storm? You have
not been on the river all this time?”
“I have been in the depths of
the river, I believe!” answered Mabel.
“The boat was upset I was dashed beneath
the wheels of a steamer, but for ”
She hesitated, and a red flush shot over her face;
the noble woman recovered herself in an instant, “but
for James, and Ben Benson.”
An answering flush came to the general’s
cheek. He darted a quick glance at James.
“And how came Mr. Harrington
so near you, madam? They told me you had gone
upon the river alone.”
“And so she did,” answered
James, stepping forward. “I saw her put
out from the shore, apparently unconscious of the
coming storm, and followed the course of her boat.”
“Why did you not warn her, sir?”
“I did, more than once at the
top of my voice, but the wind was against me!”
“And where did all this happen?”
inquired the general, more interested than he had
been.
“Near a ravine, some distance
down the stream. You will not perhaps be able
to recognize the place, sir,” answered Mabel,
“but it is nearly opposite the small house in
which Miss Barker resides with her mother.”
The general did not start, but a strange
expression crept over his features, as if he were
becoming more interested and less pleased.
“May I ask you what took you in that direction,
madam?”
“Nothing better than a caprice,
I fear,” answered Mabel; “at first I went
out for exercise and solitude, then remembering Miss
Barker, I put on shore.”
“Surely you did not go to that
house!” cried the general, interrupting her
almost for the first time in his life.
“Yes, I went,” answered Mabel with simplicity.
“Indeed! and what did you find whom
did you see?”
“I saw a dusky woman, rude and
insolent, who called herself Agnes Barker’s
nurse nothing more.”
“So you found an insolent woman.”
“A very disagreeable one, at
least, General Harrington, but I am faint and ill permit
me to answer all farther questions to-morrow!”
General Harrington’s manner
imperceptibly changed; he no longer enforced abrupt
questions upon the exhausted lady, but with a show
of gallant attention, stepped forward and drew her
arm through his.
“You can go to your rooms, young
men,” he said, “I will attend Mrs. Harrington.”
“Shall I have Lina called, mother?”
said Ralph, following his parents, “she did
not know of your absence, and I would not terrify her!”
Before Mabel could speak, the general answered for
her
“No, why should Lina be disturbed?
Send Mrs. Harrington’s maid,” and with
a gentle wave of the hand which forbade all farther
conversation, the general led his wife from the room.