d when other changes should have come
into his life, as they must come, his friendship with Miss Holt might be
renewed and strengthened, and through all his thoughts and questionings
it never came into his mind that the suffering might not be his alone.

About three months before this time, when Mr Maxwell had been a
resident of Gershom for a year and a half, circumstances occurred which
made it advisable for him to pay a visit to the place which had been his
home during the last years of his mother's life, and during the years
which followed her death while his course of study continued. It was a
visit which he anticipated with lively pleasure, and much enjoyed. His
home while there was, of course, in the house of his friend and his
mother's friend, Miss Martha Langden; and visiting her aunt at the same
time, as had frequently happened in former years when he had been this
lady's guest, was her niece, Miss Essie. She was a very pretty girl,
and a good girl as well, eight or ten years younger than Mr Maxwell,
but not too young to be his wife, his mother and her aunt had decided
long ago when Miss Essie was a child. These loving and rather romantic
friends had set their hearts on a union in every way to their view so
suitable, and they had been at less pains than was quite prudent to keep
their hopes and their plans to themselves. Indeed, as presented by a
fond mother to a studious and utterly inexperienced lad, such as young
Maxwell was at twenty, the prospect of a wife so pretty and winning and
well dowered could not but be agreeable enough, and though no formal
engagement was entered into between them, they had corresponded
frequently, and to an engagement it was taken for granted by all parties
this correspondence was to lead when the right time came.

The idea that the time of this visit might be the right time had not
presented itself so clearly to Mr Maxwell as it had to his friend Miss
Martha. Still it was natural enough and pleasant enough for him to fall
into the old relations with the pretty and good Miss Essie. Not quite
the old relations, however, for Miss Essie was a child no longer, but
eighteen years of age, and a graduate of one of the most popular ladies'
seminaries of the State, and quite inclined to stand on her dignity and
claim due consideration for her years and acquirements. She had been
one of the model young ladies of the seminary, it seemed, and in various
pretty ways, and with words su