looked sorrowfully into the future
for me. Sometimes she put her fear into words--faltering and foreboding
words; but it was always in her eyes, as they followed me wherever I
went with a mute, pathetic anxiety. No assurances of mine, no assumed
cheerfulness and fortitude could remove it. I even tried to laugh at
it, but my laugh only brought the tears into her eyes. Neither reason
nor ridicule could root it out--a root of bitterness indeed.

"Martin," she said, in her failing, plaintive voice, one evening when
Julia and I were both sitting with her, for we met now without any
regard to etiquette--"Martin, Julia and I have been talking about your
future life while you were away."

Julia's face flushed a little. She was seated on a footstool by my
mother's sofa, and looked softer and gentler than I had ever seen her
look. She had been nursing my mother with a single-hearted,
self-forgetful devotion that had often touched me, and had knit us to
one another by the common bond of an absorbing interest. Certainly I had
never leaned upon or loved Julia as I was doing now.

"There is no chance of your ever marrying Olivia now," continued my
mother, faintly, "and it is a sin for you to cherish your love for her.
That is a very plain duty, Martin."

"Such love as I cherish for Olivia will hurt neither her nor myself," I
answered. "I would not wrong her by a thought."

"But she can never be your wife," she said.

"I never think of her as my wife," I replied; "but I can no more cease
to love her than I can cease to breathe. She has become part of my life,
mother."

"Still, time and change must make a difference," she said. "You will
realize your loneliness when I am gone, though you cannot before. I want
to have some idea of what you will be doing in the years to come, before
we meet again. If I think at all, I shall be thinking of you, and I do
long to have some little notion. You will not mind me forming one poor
little plan for you once more, my boy?"

"No," I answered, smiling to keep back the tears that were ready to
start to my eyes.

"I scarcely know how to tell you," she said. "You must not be angry or
offended with us. But my dear Julia has promised me, out of pure love
and pity for me, you know, that if ever--how can I express it?--if you
ever wish you could return to the old plans--it may be a long time
first, but if you conquered your love for Olivia, and could go back, and
wished to go back to the time befo