ld go back to
Boston, and write Laura by the next mail, and adjure her to tell him
nothing. Some time he might bear to hear the truth, but not to-day, not
now; no, not now. What had he been thinking of to risk it? He would get
away where nobody could reach him to slay with a word this shadow of a
hope which had become such a necessity of life to him, as is opium to the
victim whose strength it has sapped and alone replaces. It was too late!
Laura, as she sat sewing by the window, had looked up and seen him, and
now as he came slowly up the walk she appeared at the door, full of
exclamations of surprise and pleasure. He went in, and they sat down.

"I thought I'd run out and see how you all were," he said, with a ghastly
smile.

"I'm so glad you did! Father was wondering only this morning if you were
never coming to see us again."

He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

"I thought I'd just run out and see you."

"Yes, I'm so glad you did!"

She did not show that she noticed his merely having said the same thing
over.

"Are you pretty well this spring?" she asked.

"Yes, I'm pretty well."

"Father was so much pleased about your patent. He's ever so proud of
you."

After a pause, during which Henry looked nervously from point to point
about the room, he said--

"Is he?"

"Yes, very, and so am I."

There was a long silence, and Laura took up her work-basket, and bent her
face over it, and seemed to have a good deal of trouble in finding some
article in it.

Suddenly he said, in a quick, spasmodic way--

"Is Madeline married?"

Good God! Would she never speak!

"No," she answered, with a falling inflection.

His heart, which had stopped beating, sent a flood of blood through every
artery. But she had spoken as if it were the worst of news, instead of
good. Ah! could it be? In all his thoughts, in all his dreams by night or
day, he had never thought, he had never dreamed of that.

"Is she dead?" he asked, slowly, with difficulty, his will stamping the
shuddering thought into words, as the steel die stamps coins from strips
of metal.

"No," she replied again, with the same ill-boding tone.

"In God's name, what is it?" he cried, springing to his feet. Laura
looked out at the window so that she might not meet his eye as she
answered, in a barely audible voice--

"There was a scandal, and he deserted her; and afterward--only last
week--she ran away, nobody knows where, but they think to Bost