A year rolled by, and Dudley returned to pass a summer’s vacation at his father’s house. How changed they found him. No longer a willful, bashful boy, he now came out in all the colors of an accomplished, impudent, empty-headed scamp. I will not pause to tell of his meetings with Mary—of the many hours passed together without the knowledge of parents or friends. Six weeks fled by, and Dudley returned to his books, to society, to vices he now followed up with an eagerness that can only be accounted for by a restless desire to drown all remembrance of the past. He received letters frequently from Mary, long, sad, wretched letters, blotted with tears. He answered them with hasty scrawls, one note to a dozen letters, and at last ceased to answer them at all. He ceased to study, his nights were passed in brawls, drunken orgies, his days in sleeping off the effect of bad wine and exhausting revelry. I have not the heart to detail the sufferings of poor little Mary. How she toiled on from day to day, between sleepless nights of agony and shame, until her cheeks seemed washed away by tears. Her parents, suspecting the truth, treated her harshly. Summer had faded into autumn, and autumn into winter. Weeks and weeks had gone by without a word from Dudley. When filled with despair, one night, after a harsh lecture from her misguided father, she promised on the morrow to tell him all. With this promise she was permitted to retire, but not to rest. Soon as the door of her little room was closed, she sat down and wrote for her parents the bitter truth. Then gathering her cloak about her shoulders, she fled into the dark, wintry night. She would go, she would seek Dudley, for what purpose she could not say—but at home there was no hope, no life. Through the long dismal night the poor girl walked along the rough frozen road that led to the city. Over wide dreary fields that seemed to stretch out in the gloom of night, miles and miles away: through groaning woods, that shrieked in the winds as they rubbed their giant arms together: past farm houses—with windows, from which twinkled little lights, and where the deep-mouthed watch-dog bayed fierce and honestly: through sleeping villages—where the winds swept, making the signs creak dismally, the once timid and delicate girl pushed on. She had no fear, for she had no thought for the present. In the present, there lay a dull, aching pain about her heart; all the rest of her fevered being was far off, in the huge, great city with Dudley. The little, timid, commonplace girl was now a heroine. In her father’s cottage her mother walked quietly about her pleasant duties, singing a low, sad melody that her children might sleep—the fire was sparkling brightly upon the hearth, lighting up the walls and rafters of that holy place, while she, the dearest, loveliest of all, was fleeing alone, in the stormy night, far, far away.