ven's blessing attend both you and yours!"

At this moment Madam Conway appeared, and fearing her inability to
control her feelings longer Maggie precipitately left the room. Going
to her chamber, she burst into a passionate fit of weeping, one moment
blaming Mr. Carrollton for having learned her secret, and the next
chiding herself for wishing to withhold from him a knowledge of her
engagement.

"It is not that I love Henry less, I am sure," she thought; and laying
her head upon her pillow she recalled everything which had passed
between herself and her affianced husband, trying to bring back the
olden happiness with which she had listened to his words of love. But
it would not come; there was a barrier in the way--Arthur Carrollton,
as he looked when he said so sadly, "You need not tell me, Maggie."

"Oh, I wish he had not asked me that question!" she sighed. "It has
put such dreadful thoughts into my head. And yet I love Henry as well
as ever--I know I do; I am sure of it, or if I do not, I will," and
repeating to herself again and again the words, "I will, I will," she
fell asleep.

Will, however, is not always subservient to one's wishes, and during
the first few days succeeding the incident of that night Maggie often
found herself wishing Arthur Carrollton had never come to Hillsdale,
he made her so wretched, so unhappy. Insensibly, too, she became
a very little unamiable, speaking pettishly to her grandmother,
disrespectfully to Mrs. Jeffrey, haughtily to Anna, and rarely to Mr.
Carrollton, who after the lapse of two or three weeks began to talk of
returning home in the same vessel with Anna Jeffrey, at which time his
health would be fully restored. Then, indeed, did Maggie awake to
the reality that while her hand was plighted to one, she loved
another--not as in days gone by she had loved Henry Warner, but with a
deeper, more absorbing love. With this knowledge, too, there came the
thought that Arthur Carrollton had once loved her, and but for the
engagement now so much regretted he would ere this have told her so.
But it was too late! too late! He would never feel toward her again as
he once had felt, and bitter tears she shed as she contemplated
the fast-coming future, when Arthur Carrollton would be gone, or
shudderingly thought of the time when Henry Warner would return to
claim her promise.

"I cannot, cannot marry him," she cried, "until I've torn that other
image from my heart!" and then for many da