"What! and see that young lover at my wife's feet every night!" said George, fiercely. "No! I will risk all, lose all, if need be. I have been held back long enough," and he had gone directly from my uncle's room to Annie herself. In a short time Annie had come to her mother in a perfect passion of weeping, and told her that Cousin George had asked her to be his wife; and that she had never dreamed of such a thing; and she thought he was very unkind to be so angry with her; how could she have supposed he cared for her in that way, when he had been like her elder brother all his life. "Why, he seems almost as old as papa," said poor Annie, sobbing and crying, "and he ought to have known that I should not kiss him and put my arms around him if--if"--she could not explain; but she knew! Annie had gone to her own room, ill. My aunt and I sat together in the library silently crying; we were wretched. "Oh, if George would only have waited," said Aunt Ann. "I think it would have made no difference, aunty," said I. "No, I am afraid not," replied she, and each knew that the other was thinking of Edward Neal. George Ware left town the next day. He sent me a short note. He could not see any one, he said, and begged me to give a farewell kiss for him to "the sweet mother of my Annie. For mine she is, and will be in heaven, though she will be the wife of Edward Neal on earth." When I next saw our Annie she was Edward Neal's promised bride. A severe fit of illness, the result of all these excitements, confined me to my room for three weeks after George's departure; and I knew only from Aunt Ann's lips the events which had followed upon it. George Ware's presence on that first evening had brought revelation to Edward Neal as well as to all the other members of that circle. That very night he had told his parents that Annie would be his wife.