“The summer before you came to us, I met _Arthur Grey_. He was among the visitors who boarded at the hotel. He was said to be very rich, very aristocratic, very fastidious. You never saw him, and cannot understand the strange fascination there was about him, or how his manner, when he chose to be gracious, was calculated to win upon a simple girl like me. I met him, and, ere I was aware of it, he taught me how to love him. He became an inmate of our house at last, and thus our growing fondness for each other was hidden from the public, which would have said that I was no match for him. I _know_ that he loved me. I never doubted that for a moment. Deception can assume many garbs, but never the guise he wore when he won my girlish love. He asked me to be his wife one autumn night, when the Indian summer haze was on the hills, and the mountain tops were gorgeous with scarlet and gold. I had never dreamed that a human being could be as happy as I was when, with him at my side, I walked back across the fields to our home. The very air around seemed full of the ecstatic joy I felt as I thought of a life spent with _him_. He wished me to keep our betrothal a secret for a time, he said, as he did not care to have his mother and sisters know of it just then. They were at the hotel for a few weeks, and I used to see them at church; and their cold, haughty manner impressed me disagreeably, just as it did every one who came in contact with them. I should not live with them, Arthur said. I should have a home of my own on the Hudson. He had just bought a residence there, and he described it to me until I knew every tree, and shrub, and winding walk upon the place. “Then he went away, and the dreary winter came, and his letters, so frequent at first, began to come irregularly, but were always loving and tender, and full of excuses for the long delay. Once I heard of fierce opposition from his mother and sister, and a desire on their part to persuade him into a more brilliant marriage. But I trusted him fully until the spring, when after a longer interval of silence than usual there came a letter from his mother, who wrote at her son’s request, as he was ill and unable to write himself. I was still very dear to him, she said, but considering all things he thought it better for us both that the engagement should be broken. I had been brought up so differently, that he did not believe I would ever be happy in the society in which he moved, and it was really doing me a kindness to leave me where I was; still, if I insisted, he was in honor bound to adhere to his promise, and should do so.