She placed Lucy’s letter in his hand, and Guy read it with a heart which ached to its very core. It was cruel to deceive that gentle, trusting girl writing so lovingly of him, but to lose Maddy was to his undisciplined nature more dreadful still, and casting the letter aside he pleaded again, this time with the energy of despair, for he read his fate in Maddy’s face, and when her lips a second time confirmed her first reply, while she appealed to his sense of honor, of justice, of right, and told him he could and must forget her, he knew there was no hope, and, man though he was, bowed his head upon Maddy’s hands and wept stormily, with mighty, choking sobs, which shook his frame, and seemed to break up the very fountains of his life. Then to Maddy there came a terrible temptation. Was it right for two who loved as they did to live their lives apart?—right in her to force on Guy the fulfillment of vows he could not literally keep? As mental struggles are always the more severe, so Maddy’s took all her strength away, and for many minutes she was so white and still that Guy roused himself to care for her, thinking of nothing then except to make her better. It was a long time ere that interview ended, but when it did there was on Maddy’s face a peaceful expression, which only the sense of having done right at the cost of a fearful sacrifice could give, while Guy’s bore traces of a great and crushing sorrow, as he went out from Maddy’s presence and felt that to him she was lost forever. He had promised her he would do right; had said he would marry Lucy, and be to her what a husband should be; and he had listened while she talked of another world, where they neither marry or are given in marriage, and where it would not be sinful for them to love each other, and as she talked her face had shone like the face of an angel. He had hold one of her hands at parting, bending low his head, while she laid the other on it as she blessed him, letting her fingers thread his soft brown hair for a moment and linger caressingly among his curly locks. But that was over now. They had parted forever. She was lying where he left her, cold and white, and faint with dizzy pain. He was riding swiftly toward Aikenside, his heart-beats keeping time to the swift tread of his horse’s feet, and his mind a confused medley of distracted thoughts, amid which two facts stood out prominent and clear—he had lost Maddy Clyde, and had promised her to marry Lucy Atherstone. For many days after that Guy kept his room, saying he was sick, and refusing to see any one save Jessie and Mrs. Noah, the latter of whom guessed in part what had happened, and imputing to him far more credit than he deserved, petted and pitied and cared for him until he grew weary of it, and said to her, savagely: