"It would give people too much chance for talk," she said; so Kate was obliged to content herself with going as far as the depot, and watching, until out of sight, the car which bore them away.
Upon the piazza stood the little group, awaiting the arrival of the carriage which was to convey them to the station.

Mr.Hamilton seemed unusually gloomy, and with folded arms paced up and down the long piazza, rarely speaking or noticing any one.
"Are you sorry we are going, father ?" asked Carrie, going up to him.
"If you are I will gladly stay with you." Mr.Hamilton paused, and pushing back the fair hair from his daughter's white brow, he kissed her tenderly, saying, "No, Carrie; I want you to go.

The journey will do you good, for you are getting too much the look your poor mother used to wear." Why thought he then of Carrie's mother?
Was it because he knew that ere his child returned to him another would be in that mother's place?
Anon, Margaret came near, and motioning Carrie away, Mr.Hamilton took his other daughter's hand, and led her to the end of the piazza, where could easily be seen the little graveyard and tall white monument pointing toward the bright blue sky where dwelt the one whose grave that costly marble marked.
Pointing out the spot to Margaret, he said, "Tell me truly, Maggie, did you love your father or your mother best ?" Mag looked wonderingly at him a moment, and then replied, "While mother lived I loved her more than you, but now that she is dead, I think of and love you as both father and mother." "And will you always love me thus ?" asked he.
"Always," was Mag's reply, as she looked curiously in her father's face, and thinking that he had not said what he intended to when first he drew her there.
Just then the carriage drove up, and after a few good-bys and parting words Ernest Hamilton's children were gone, and he was left alone.
"Why didn't I tell her, as I intended to ?" thought he.

"Is it because I fear her--fear my own child?
No, it cannot be--and yet there is that in her eye which sometimes makes me quail, and which, if necessary, would keep at bay a dozen stepmothers.

But neither she, nor either one of them, has aught to dread from Mrs.Carter, whose presence will, I think, be of great benefit to us all, and whose gentle manners, I trust, will tend to soften Mag!" Meantime his children were discussing and wondering at the strange mood of their father.