“I’ll take it in the way to _make_ it good, then. I’m not ready for anything unpleasant,” she said, with a vain attempt to keep her lips from quivering. “Then I’ll tell you. Guess who is married. But you will never guess,” he replied with confident eagerness. “Some one in Bensalem?” “No.” “Bensalem is all my world.” “You forget somebody on the other side of the world.” “Not Cousin Don,” in the most startled surprise. “Cousin Don. It’s a stroke of genius, or something. He never did anything like other people. Just as he was on the point of starting for home, he decided to stay and marry an English girl he found out he was in love with; or found out she was in love with him; he seems rather surprised himself. They were married the day he expected to sail for home.” “Then why didn’t he come and bring her?” asked Judith as soon as she could find her voice. “The English girl would rather stay in England, or on the Continent; she has no fancy to live in America.” “I’m afraid—he didn’t want to,” said Judith who could not believe that Cousin Don had failed her. “He never did a thing he didn’t want to in his life.” “But he has not been quite fair to keep it from us; I did not think he _could_ do such a thing.” “He did not keep it all from me,” Roger replied, seriously; “perhaps I should have prepared you for it. He has been interested in her for some time, visited her in England—whether he did not know his own mind, or she did not know hers does not appear; but now they both seem to be of the same mind. Judith, dear, it isn’t such a dreadful thing.” “Not to you,” said Judith. Now, he would never come and take her away. No one would ever take her away. She did not belong to him any longer. “Judith,” began Aunt Affy, hurriedly in the kitchen doorway. “Oh, you _are_ fixing the beef-tea.” She strained the beef-tea, salted it, poured it into a cup, and went to Aunt Rody’s entry bed-room as if she were in a dream, not thinking, or feeling anything but that she was left alone in the world, her Cousin Don had cast her off, he had broken his word to her mother, he had not cared for her as if she were his little sister. He did not even care to write and tell her that he was married and not coming home. “Poor child,” Aunt Affy was saying in the kitchen, “it will break her heart.” “It shall not break her heart,” was the fierce answer. “I would rather have told her he was dead than married—for her own sake. I cannot understand his shameful neglect. No money has come for her for six months—but she will never know that. His letter to me gives only the news of his marriage—his first letter for a month—but he has never written to me regularly as he has to her. It would be a satisfaction to run over to England to have it out with him.” “But he had a right to be married,” said Aunt Affy, doubtfully.