hus suddenly stepped into a place much beyond her years. It seemed to the
girl as she sat in the great chintz chair and read and re-read that
letter, as if she lived years that afternoon, and all her life was to be
changed henceforth. It was not that she was sorry that she could not go
back, and live out her girlhood and have it crowned with Hanford Weston's
love. Not at all. She knew, as well now as she ever had known, that he
could never be anything to her, but she knew also, or thought she knew,
that he could have given her something, in his clumsy way, that now she
could never have from any man, seeing she was David's and David could not
love her that way, of course.

Having come to this conclusion, she arose and wrote a letter giving and
bequeathing to Mary Ann Fothergill all right, title, and claim to the
affections of Hanford Weston, past, present, and future--sending him a
message calculated to smooth his ruffled feelings, with her pretty thanks
for his youthful adoration; comfort his sorrow with the thought that it
must have been a hallucination, that some day he would find his true ideal
which he had only thought he had found in her; and send him on his way
rejoicing with her blessings and good wishes for a happy life. As for Mary
Ann, for once she received her meed of Marcia's love, for homesick Marcia
felt more tenderness for her than she had ever been able to feel before;
and Marcia's loving messages set Mary Ann in a flutter of delight, as she
laid her plans for comforting Hanford Weston.

CHAPTER XIV

David slowly recovered his poise. Faced by that terrible, impenetrable
wall of impossibility he stood helpless, his misery eating in upon his
soul, but there still remained the fact that there was nothing, absolutely
nothing, which he could possibly do. At times the truth rose to the
surface, the wretched truth, that Kate was at fault, that having done the
deed she should abide by it, and not try to keep a hold upon him, but it
was not often he was able to think in this way. Most of the time he
mourned over and for the lovely girl he had lost.

As for Marcia, she came and went unobtrusively, making quiet comfort for
David which he scarcely noticed. At times he roused himself to be polite
to her, and made a labored effort to do something to amuse her, just as if
she had been visiting him as a favor and he felt in duty bound to make the
time pass pleasantly, but she t