“Yes,” came faintly from Anna’s lips, and laying her face on the pillow beside Mildred’s, she murmured, inaudibly: “God help me, and forgive that falsehood, I will love him, if I do not now.” Anna did not know she prayed, but He who understands our faintest desire knew it, and from that moment dated her return to duty. She should not wrong that gentle, trusting girl. She could not break Milly’s heart with Adam’s as break it she surely should if her wicked course were persisted in. And then there flashed upon her the conviction that Herbert had deceived her in more ways than one. He had represented Mildred as tiring of the engagement as well as himself—had said that though her pride might be a little wounded, she would on the whole be glad to be rid of him so easily, and all the while he knew that what he said was false. Would he deal less deceitfully by her when the novelty of calling her his wife had worn away? Would he not weary of her and sigh for the victim sacrificed so cruelly? Anna’s head and heart both seemed bursting with pain, and when Mildred, alarmed at the pallor of her face, asked if she were ill, there was no falsehood in the reply, “Yes, I’m dizzy and faint—I cannot stay here longer,” and scarcely conscious of what she was doing, Anna quitted the room, leaning for support against the banisters in the hall and almost falling against old Martha who was carrying hot tea to Mildred Atherton. “Let me go home, I am sick,” Anna whispered to Adam, who, summoned by Martha, bent anxiously over her, asking what was the matter. It was too late to go home, he said. She must stay there till morning; and very tenderly he helped her up to the chamber she was to occupy, the one next to his own, and from which, at a late hour, she heard him, as, thinking her asleep, he thanked his Heavenly Father for giving her to him, and asked that he might be more worthy of her than he was. “No, Adam, oh, no—pray that I may be more worthy of you,” trembled on Anna’s lips, and then lest her resolution might fail, she arose and striking a light, tore a blank leaf from a book lying on a table, and wrote to Herbert Dunallen that she could never meet him again, except as a friend and the future husband of Mildred Atherton. Folding it once over, she wrote his name upon it, then, faint with excitement, and shivering with cold, threw herself upon the outside of the bed, and sobbed herself into a heavy sleep, more exhausting in its effects than wakefulness would have been. CHAPTER VI. THE RESULT. There was another patient for the village doctor, besides Mildred, at the cottage next morning. Indeed, _her_ case sank into insignificance when compared with that of the moaning, tossing, delirious Anna, who shrank away from Adam, begging him not to touch her, for she was not worthy.