waited upon Eveline Houghton--then left for Turner without calling to see Dora."

"Indeed, I thought they were to be married this fall?"

"Such has been the report; but as she has not seen or heard from him since, she does not know how to construe his conduct towards her."

"When Orville was returning from his eastern tour, he came across Charles, in Portland, and rode with him a short distance. He sent Dora a present by him, but told him nothing of the transaction. She came to me in hopes of hearing something more definite from him."

"How does the poor girl bear it?"

"She is very unhappy, and says she is not ashamed to have people know she had been deceived; but many tell her they wouldn't mind anything about it."

"They may say so," said Annie, raising her dark eyes to Edith, while a deeper flush suffused her cheek; "but, Edith, I tell you, it will wear and wear upon the secret springs of life, till it bears its victim to the grave."

Edith gazed upon her with such an anxious, pitying expression, that she felt she had betrayed her own secret, and bending her head to hide her blushes, she picked up the mellow, golden colored fruit that lay around her, and commenced rolling them down into the stream that flowed at their feet. At that moment poor crazy Betsey Thornton came bounding over the stone wall that separated that from an adjoining enclosure, and gathering her blanket about her, stood curtesying and laughing before them, repeating as she did so,

"Poor little Hannah Pease, poor little Hannah Pease--old Ben Thornton, old Ben Thornton."

"Take some apples, Mrs. Thornton," said Edith, as she regarded her with a sad expression of countenance.

She took them, curtesied, and with her low, gurgling laugh, leaped over the wall, and went muttering on to rock or tree, or any other object that came in her way.

"Edith," said Annie, "what poor Blanche is that, for a poor love sick maiden, I am sure she must be? As she came with her large blanket fluttering over the wall, it reminded me of Sir Walter Scott's poor Blanche, that

CONTENTS

  "Stood hovering o'er the hollow way, And fluttered wide her mantle gray."

Edith smiled as she replied,

 Prev. P 48/198 next