Catherine's recovery was protracted; and, alas! when she appeared in
public, it was perceived that the disease had robbed her of her
brightest charms. Her face was covered with unsightly marks. Still,
the graceful figure, the winning smile, the fascinating manner,
remained; and few, after the first shock of the change had passed
away, missed the former loveliness of the once beautiful Catherine.
A year passed. By slow and cautious hints and foreshadowings, the
truth was revealed; but Miss Dodbury bore all with resignation.
'It is perhaps better for me,' she one day said to Mrs Hardman, 'that
it is so. Had he loved and wedded another, I dared no longer to have
cherished his image as I do. But now it is my blessed privilege to
love him in spirit as dearly as ever.'

The hitherto proud, tearless woman of the world wept a flood when
unconsciously, innocently, Catherine spoke of the lost Herbert. On
one such occasion she threw herself on the girl's neck, exclaiming,
'Oh, what have I done! what have I done!'

Mrs Hardman never spent a day apart from Catherine. What a change of
feeling one short year had wrought! Formerly, she looked on the girl
as a bar to her ambitious projects; now, she could not lavish love
and kindness enough to satisfy her sentiment of atonement towards the
same being. One evening they were walking in that part of the park
which overlooks the sea, when a sail appeared in the horizon, then
another, and another. The sight of ships never failed to remind the
mother of her son; for the presentiment regarding his disappearance
never forsook her. 'Dearest Catherine,' she exclaimed, 'would that
one of those sails were wafting him back to us.' The girl trembled,
and Mrs Hardman begged forgiveness for an involuntary allusion which