"I wish to inquire if you have known long of this shameful
clandestine love affair of my daughter's?" said she, and Louisa and I
were nonplussed. We did not know what to say. Luckily, Mrs. Jameson
did not wait for an answer; she went on to pour her grievance into
our ears, without even stopping to be sure whether they were
sympathizing ones or not.

"My daughter cannot marry into one of these village families," said
she, without apparently the slightest consideration of the fact that
we were a village family. "My daughter has been very differently
brought up. I have other views for her; it is impossible; it must be
understood at once that I will not have it."

Mrs. Jameson was still talking, and Louisa and I listening with more
of dismay than sympathy, when who should walk in but Caroline Liscom
herself.

She did not knock--she never does; she opened the door with no
warning whatsoever, and stood there.

Louisa turned pale, and I know I must have. I could not command my
voice, though I tried hard to keep calm.

I said "Good-morning," when it should have been "Good-evening,"
and placed Alice's little chair, in which she could not by any
possibility sit, for Caroline.

"No, I don't want to sit down," said Caroline, and she kept her word
better than Mrs. Jameson. She turned directly to the latter. "I have
just been over to your house," said she, "and they told me that you