“I wish,” she sobbed, “I wish no one had ever found out the truth! I wish I had married him as Doctor Rupert and never known any different. We should have been so happy. Oh, I wonder what has become of him, and where he is at this moment? Does he love me still, or has his heart turned to another?” The bitterness of death was in that thought--the bitterness of death, and the anguish of jealous love that tore her heart almost in twain. Mrs. Hamilton came in so abruptly that she could not hide her pale, tear-stained face from her startled gaze. “Oh, my dear girl, what has gone wrong?” she cried quickly. “Everything--my whole life!” cried Eva rashly, desperately. Mrs. Hamilton knew nothing of the tragedy of Eva’s life. Her brother had kept it a dead secret. She gazed in wonder at the desperate girl, who added passionately: “Auntie, dear, help me! advise me! My heart is breaking for some one I loved in the past, but whom fate forbids me ever to marry.” Mrs. Hamilton thought quickly: “Some country bumpkin that my brother has torn her from when he brought her home with him,” and, aloud, she answered soothingly: “The very best advice I can give you, my dear niece, is that you should accept one of the devoted lovers always dangling after you now. In a happy marriage you would soon forget the fancy of your immature girlhood.” “Do you really think so, auntie? I am so unhappy at times I would give the whole world just to forget.” “You will never forget as long as you brood over the dead past, dear. Put it away from you and come out into the sunshine of a new love and hope,” was the tender reply, and Eva, drying her eyes, answered sadly: “I have tried to, but I could not do it, and my heart seems breaking.” CHAPTER XXVI. REGINALD’S PROPOSAL. Eva sank into a low chair and hid her face in her hands. The sound of her low, distressful sobbing filled the long drawing-room. It was a complete breakdown--one that her aunt had never witnessed in her before. She was so young and childish when her father brought her home, she had never suspected a lover in her past, much less the tragedy of woe that had sent her into a madhouse and left its fatal impress on her life. She stood beside the window, pained and doubtful how to offer further comfort, and wondering if it might not be a good time to speak a word in her stepson’s favor. Fortune favored her, for just then she saw him in front of the house in his splendid new sleigh, with his pair of Kentucky thoroughbreds in their glittering, gold-mounted harness. She cried out eagerly: “Oh, Eva, dear, the sun has come out, and here is Reggie with his new Kentucky grays to take you for a sleigh ride! Dry your eyes quickly, before he comes in!” Eva dabbed her eyes with her tiny lace handkerchief, but they were still dim with the tears she had shed when the young man entered through the heavy portières, tall, elegant, handsome, in his long fur-lined overcoat.