. I am sorry, oh, so sorry, but indeed I
am not to blame," she added, in conclusion, and this was the nearest
approach there was to an admission that anybody was to blame for this
disappointment which cut so cruelly, making even Uncle Ephraim cry as
out in the barn he hung away the mended harness and covered the new
buggy, which had been bought for naught.

"I might have had the overcoat, for Katy will never come home again,
never. God grant that it's the Cameron pride, not hers, that kept her
from us," the old man said, as on the hay he knelt down and prayed that
Katy had not learned to despise the home where she was so beloved.

"Katy will never come to us again," seemed the prevailing opinion at
Silverton, where more than Uncle Ephraim felt a chilling doubt at times
as to whether she really wished to come or not. If she did, it seemed
easy of accomplishment to those who knew not how perfect and complete
were the fetters thrown around her, and how unbending the will which
governed hers. Could they have seen the look in Katy's face when she
first understood that she was not going to Silverton, their hearts would
have bled for the thwarted creature who fled up the stairs to her own
room, where Esther found her twenty minutes later, cold and fainting
upon the bed, her face as white as ashes, and her hands clinched so
tightly that the nails left marks upon the palms.

"It was not strange that the poor child should faint--indeed, it was
only natural that nature should give way after so many weeks of gayety,
and she very far from being strong," Mrs. Cameron said to Wilford, who
was beginning to repent of his decision, and who but for that remark
perhaps might have revoked it.

Indeed, he made an attempt to do so when, as consciousness came back,
Katy lay so pale and still before him; but Katy did not understand him
or guess that he wished her to meet him more than half the way, and so
the verdict was unchanged, and in a kind of bewilderment, Katy wrote the
hurried letter, feeling less actual pain than did its readers, for the
disappointment had stunned her for a time, and all she could remember of
the passage home on that same night when Mark Ray sat with Helen in the
sitting-room at Silverton, was that there was a fearful storm of rain
mingled with lightning flashes and thunder peals, which terrified the
other ladies, but brought to her no other sensation save that it would
not be so very hard to perish in the dark wate