“I pass over the pain, and bitter disappointment, and dreadful days, when, in the shadow of the woods where I had walked so often with him, I laid my face in the grass and wished that I could die. I did not write him a word, but I sent him back his letters, and the ring, and every memento of those blissful hours; and the few who knew of my engagement guessed that it was broken, and said it had ended as they expected. “Then _you_ came, just when my heart was so sore, and you were kind to father, and sought me of him for your wife, and he begged me to consider your proposal, and save him his home for his old age. Then I went again into the shadow of those woods, and crept away behind a rock, under a luxuriant pine, and prayed that I might know what was right for me to do. My father found me there one day and took me home, and said I need not marry you. He would rather end his days in the poor-house than see me so distressed. But the sight of his dear old face growing so white, and thin, as the time for the foreclosure drew near, was more than I could bear, and it mattered little what I did in the future; so I went to you and said ‘I will be your wife, and do the best I can; but you must be patient with me. I am only a little girl.’ “I ought to have told you of Arthur, but I did not, and so trouble came of it. We were married in the morning, and went to Boston, and then back for a few days to Schodick, where there was a letter for _me_, from _Arthur_. It was all a terrible deception: he had had a long, long illness, and his mother,—a cruel, artful woman,—took advantage of it, and wrote me that cruel letter. Then, when my package reached her, and she found there was no word of protest in it, she gave it to him, and worked upon him in his weak condition until he believed me false, and the excitement brought on a relapse which lasted longer and was more dangerous than his first illness had been. As soon as he was able to hold his pen, he wrote to me again; but his mother managed to withhold the letter, and so the time went on until, by chance, he discovered the deception, but it was too late. _I was your wife._ I am your wife now, and so I must not tell you of that terrible hour of anguish in my room at home, when cousin Lucy, who was then at our house, found me fainting on the floor with the letter in my hand. I told _her_ everything, for we were to each other as sisters; but with that exception, no living being has ever heard my story. I asked her to send him a paper containing the notice of my marriage, and that was all the answer I returned to his letter. “Then you took me to Millbank, and I tried to do my duty, even though my heart was broken. After Roger came, I was happier, and I appreciated all your kindness, and the pain was not so hard to bear, till we went to Saratoga that summer, where I met _him_ again.