cure! How I thrilled at the thought of the love and companionship _I_
could give him somewhere in a rose-embowered cottage far from the
madding crowd! (He boarded at the Andersonville Hotel alone now.) What
nobler career could I have than the blotting out of his stricken heart
the memory of that faithless woman who had so wounded him and blighted
his youth? What, indeed? If only he could see it as I saw it. If only
by some sign or token he could know of the warm love that was his but
for the asking! Could he not see that no longer need he pine alone and
unappreciated in the Andersonville Hotel? Why, in just a few weeks I
was to be through school. And then--

On the night before commencement Mr. Harold Hartshorn ascended our
front steps, rang the bell, and called for my father. I knew because I
was upstairs in my room over the front door; and I saw him come up the
walk and heard him ask for Father.

Oh, joy! Oh, happy day! He knew. He had seen it as I saw it. He had
come to gain Father's permission, that he might be a duly accredited
suitor for my hand!

During the next ecstatic ten minutes, with my hand pressed against my
wildly beating heart, I planned my wedding dress, selected with care
and discrimination my trousseau, furnished the rose-embowered cottage
far from the madding crowd--and wondered _why_ Father did not send for
me. Then the slam of the screen door downstairs sent me to the window,
a sickening terror within me,

Was he _going_--without seeing me, his future bride? Impossible!

Father and Mr. Harold Hartshorn stood on the front steps below,