n seeking the hand of one who was to him more angel
than woman.

He said very little; he took it very quietly. It seemed to him as
though all the life went out of him, and as though hope died within
him for ever. But he scarcely showed any outward emotion as he rose
and said farewell; and little did he guess how, when he had gone,
Gertrude flung herself on the floor in a passion of tears and
sobbed till the fountain of her weeping was exhausted.

"I was right! I was right! It was not love; it was only pity! But
ah, how terrible it is to put aside all the happiness of one's
life! Oh I wonder if I have done wrong! I wonder if I could better
have borne it if I had humbled myself to take what he had to offer,
without thinking of anything but myself!"

Would he come again? Would he try to see her any more? Would this
be the end of everything between them? Gertrude asked herself these
questions a thousand times a day; but a week flew by and he had not
come. She had not seen a sign of him, nor had any word concerning
him reached her from without. There was nothing very unusual in this,
certainly; and yet as day after day passed by without bringing him,
the girl felt her heart sinking within her, and would have given
worlds for the chance of reconsidering her well-considered judgment.

How the days went by she scarcely knew, but the next event in her
dream-like life was the sudden bursting into the room of Dorcas,
her face flushed, and her eyelids swollen and red with weeping.

Dorcas was a member of Lady Scrope's household, but paid visits
from time to time to the other house. Also, as Lady Scrope's house
was not shut up, she could go thence to pay a visit home at any
time, and she had just come from one such visit now.

Gertrude sprang up at sight of her, asking anxiously:

"Dorcas! Dorcas! what is wrong?"

"Reuben!" cried Dorcas, with a great catch in her breath, and then
she fell sobbing again as though her heart would break.

Gertrude stood like one turned to stone, her face growing as white
as her kerchief.

"What of Reuben?" she asked, in a voice that she hardly knew for
her own. "He is not--dead?"

"Pray Heaven he be not," cried Dorcas through her sobs; and then,
with a great effort controlling herself, she told her brief tale.

"I went home at noon today and found them all in sore trouble.
Reuben has not been seen or heard of for three days. Mother says
she had a fear for several days before that that so