sat perfectly still at her desk. _Blair was married._ And he
had not told her,--that was the first thought. Then, into the
pitiful, personal dismay of mortification and wounded love, came
the sword-thrust of a second thought: he had stolen his friend's
wife.

It was not a moment for nice discriminations; the fact that
Elizabeth had not been married to David seemed immaterial. This
was because, to Sarah Maitland's generation, the word, in this
matter of getting married, was so nearly as good as the bond,
that a broken engagement was always a solemn, and generally a
disgraceful thing. So, when she said that Blair had "stolen
David's wife," she cringed with shame. What would his father say
to such conduct! In what had she been wanting that Herbert's son
could disgrace his father's name--and hate his mother? For of
course he must hate her to shut her out of his life, and not tell
her he was going to get married! Her mind seemed to oscillate
between the abstraction of his dishonor and a more intimate and
primitive pain,--the sense of personal slight. "Oh, my son, my
son, my son," she said. She was bending over, her elbows on her
knees, her furrowed forehead resting on her clenched hands; her
whole big body quivered. He had shut her out.... He hated her....
He had never loved her.... "My son! my son!" Then a sharp return
of memory to the shame of his conduct whipped her to her feet and
set her walking about the room. It was long after midnight before
she said to herself that the first thing to do was to learn
exactly what had happened. Nannie must tell her. It was then that
she went up to her stepdaughter's room.

When Nannie had told her, or rather when Blair's letter had made