"I have been calculating," she goes on, in a distressed tone, "and the very night I was dancing so frivolously at that horrible ball he must have been lying awake here waiting with a sick heart for the news that was to--kill him. I shall never go to a ball again; I shall never dance again," says Molly, with a passionate sob, scorning, as youth will, the power of time to cure. "Darling, why should you blame yourself? Such thoughts are morbid," says Luttrell, fondly caressing the bright hair that still lies loosely against his arm. "Which of us can see into the future? And, if we could, do you think it would add to our happiness? Shake off such depressing ideas. They will injure not only your mind, but your body." "I do not think I should feel it all quite so much," says Molly, in a low, miserable, expressionless voice, "if I could only see him now and then. No, not in the flesh--I do not mean that,--but if I could only bring his face before my mind I might be content. For hours together I sit, with my hands clasped before my eyes, trying to conjure him up, and I cannot. Almost every casual acquaintance I possess, all the people whose living or dying matters to me not at all, rise at my command; but he never. Is it not curious?" "Perhaps it is because your mind dwells too much upon him. But tell me of your affairs," says Luttrell, abruptly but kindly, leading her to a sofa and seating himself beside her, with a view of drawing her from her unhappy thoughts. "Are they as bad as Mrs. Massereene says?" "Quite as bad." "Then what do they mean to do?" In a tone of the deepest commiseration. "'They'? We, you mean. What others, I suppose, have learned to do before us--work for our daily bread." An incredulous look comes into his eyes, but he wisely subdues it. "And what do you propose doing?" he asks, calmly, meaning in his own mind to humor her. "You are like Mr. Buscarlet,--he would know everything," says Molly, with a smile; "but this is a question you must not ask me,--just yet. I have a hope,--perhaps I had better say an idea; and until it is confirmed or rejected I shall tell no one of it. No, not even you." "Well, never mind. Tell me instead when you intend leaving Brooklyn." "In a fortnight we must leave it. Is it not a little while?--only two short weeks in which to say good-bye forever to my home,--(how much that word comprises!)--to the place where all my life has been spent,--where every stone, and tree, and path is endeared to me by a thousand memories." "And after?" "We go to London. There I hope to work out my idea." "You have forgotten to tell me," says Luttrell, slowly, "my part in all these arrangements." "Yours? Ah, Teddy, you put an end to our engagement in good time. Now it must have been broken, whether we liked it or not."