George still held the book, awkwardly shifting it from hand to hand: at length he held it out; "Take it, dame," he said, "take it; for I'm going to be married to Jane Dixon, and I must not think any more about Susan, nor about the days that are passed and gone; it won't do," and he pushed the book towards Dame Foster, and abruptly opened the door. "God bless you, George," and Susan held out her hand. He had closed the latch, and was gone. Her hand dropped to her side, but she was not mortified. She scarcely knew how it was that she felt so much less miserable than she expected she would have done, when George was about to be married to another,--when an eternal barrier was about to be placed between them,--when she had broken the last link that bound them to each other. Alas! it must be confessed that if the causes of her more resigned frame of mind were accurately analyzed, there might be discovered, among better feelings, a slight admixture of vanity, which had been soothed by finding George still remembered her with affection, and by feeling that he did not love Jane Dixon so well as he had once loved her. Susan was a good and a generous girl; but in her nature there was a portion of that quality which, although subdued and chastened by heavy affliction, is seldom entirely rooted out of the human heart. She did not wish George to be unhappy on her account; she heartily hoped Jane would prove a good wife to him; and yet, after having experienced considerable mortification in the course of his unavoidable neglect of her, it was a balm to poor frail human nature to feel that she was not relinquished without a pang. "My poor girl," said Sarah, after she had watched George's hurried steps along the road, over the stile, and into the fields beyond the village,--"my poor girl! I must no longer pray, as I have done, never to see another sun rise when once my poor Nicholas is in his grave, for what will you do without me? As long as George was single, I felt you would never want a friend; but now I must hope to be spared still for your sake! I once thought, when you were George's wife, and my good man was at rest, that old Sarah Foster's task would be finished, and that she might pray the Almighty to release her from these pains. But God's will be done!" and she bowed her head in meek submission.