“I can never tell Lady Madelon and her parents the truth now. They would be ashamed of me, they would not acknowledge me,” she thought, with bitter pain, and when Lady Trueheart and her daughter who in common with the rest of the world were ignorant of the tragedy at The Acacias, called to see their young favorite, Molly was so silent and _distrait_ that they thought her even sicker than she was, and went away with the gravest apprehension for her life. Three weeks passed, and Molly was well enough to sit up in her easy-chair, well enough to walk from her bed to the window, but no tidings came from Cecil, nothing but the invariable note that Charley sent every few days, saying simply: “_I am following on his trail, but I have not found him yet!_” Oh, that cruel suspense; how it fretted Molly’s heart and nerves; how it maddened her with misery! “Gracious Heaven! am I not atoning tenfold for my folly?” she sighed over and over in those weary weeks, each one of which seemed longer than a year. In those days of suspense, illness, and despair, the girl became only a wan shadow of the lovely madcap who had won Cecil Laurens in spite of himself, and made him for almost a year the happiest of men. The soft hue of happiness faded from her face that had lost all its pretty dimples and childish plumpness; the sweet lips took on an anguished droop, and the plaintive sorrow in the hollow dark eyes was enough to move the hardest heart. Every day she had a long, hard, hysterical spell of weeping in Phebe’s arms, and the maid declared afterward that these bitter sobs and tears had saved her young mistress from madness or death from a broken heart. “They kind of relieve her feelings, those tears,” she said, knowingly. And if she had been as cultured as she was wise, she would have exclaimed with the poet: “Benign restorer of the soul! Whoever fliest to bring relief, When first we feel the rude control Of love or pity, joy or grief!” Molly did not know that those tears were saving her, for it seemed as if her heart would burst when she shed them on Phebe’s motherly breast. But they relieved her pent-up agony all the same, and made her calmer and more patient for the rest of each long weary day as it glided slowly into the irrevocable past. CHAPTER XXIX. It seemed to Molly as if she should never see Cecil again, as if in spite of all Doctor Charley’s hopes he would never return to her who had deceived him. A bitter pride began to stir in her heart. “I have no right here. I ought to have gone with Louise when she told me,” she said to herself, sadly, for her sensitive pride would not permit her to discuss her situation with Phebe, although she felt certain that the maid knew all. But one day she became aware that there was a sudden stir and confusion in the house as of a sudden arrival. Her heart leaped wildly.