f Linda was as she stood alone,
waving her hand, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining, her final word
cheery and encouraging. Marian smiled and waved in return until the
train bore her away. Then she sat down wearily and stared unseeingly
from a window. Life did such very dreadful things to people. Her
girlhood had been so happy. Then came the day of the Black Shadow, but
in her blackest hour she had not felt alone. She had supposed she was
leaning on John Gilman as securely as she had leaned on her father. She
had learned, with the loss of her father, that one cannot be sure of
anything in this world least of all of human life. Yet in her darkest
days she had depended on John Gilman. She had every reason to believe
that it was for her that he struggled daily to gain a footing in his
chosen profession. When success came, when there was no reason that
Marian could see why they might not have begun life together, there had
come a subtle change in John, and that change had developed so
rapidly that in a few weeks' time, she was forced to admit that the
companionship and loving attentions that once had been all hers were now
all Eileen's.

She sat in the train, steadily carrying her mile after mile farther from
her home, and tried to think what had happened and how and why it had
happened. She could not feel that she had been wrong in her estimate of
John Gilman. Her valuation of him had been taught her by her father and
mother and by Doctor and Mrs. Strong and by John Gilman himself. Dating
from the time that Doctor Strong had purchased the property and built a
home in Lilac Valley beside Hawthorne House, Marian had admired Eileen
and had loved her. She was several years older than the beautiful girl
she had grown up beside. Age had not mattered; Eileen's beauty had not
mattered. Marian was good looking herself.

She always had known that Eileen had imposed upon her and was selfish
with her, but Eileen's impositions were so skillfully maneuvered,
her selfishness was so adorably taken for granted that Marian in
retrospection felt that perhaps she was responsible for at least a
small part of it. She never had been able to see the inner workings
of Eileen's heart. She was not capable of understanding that when
John Gilman was poor and struggling Eileen had ignored him. It had not
occurred to Marian that when the success for which he struggled began to
come generously, Eileen would begin to covet the man she had previously
d