formally consenting to entertain such a hope. He professed to himself
that he had no doubt that she was married and lost to him for ever. Had
anything happened to break off the match, Laura would certainly have lost
no time in telling him such good news. It was childishness to fancy aught
else. But no effort of the reason can quite close the windows of the
heart against hope, and, like a furtive ray of sunshine finding its way
through a closed shutter, the thought that, after all, she might be free
surreptitiously illumined the dark place in which he sat.

When the train stopped at Newville he slipped through the crowd at the
station with the briefest possible greetings to the acquaintances he saw,
and set out to gain his father's house by a back street.

On the way he met Harry Tuttle, and could not avoid stopping to exchange
a few words with him.. As they talked, he was in a miserable panic of
apprehension lest Harry should blurt out something about Madeline's being
married. He felt that he could only bear to hear it from Laura's lips.
Whenever the other opened his mouth to speak, a cold dew started out on
Henry's forehead for fear he was going to make some allusion to Madeline;
and when at last they separated without his having done so, there was
such weakness in his limbs as one feels who first walks after a sickness.

He saw his folly now, his madness, in allowing himself to dally with a
baseless hope, which, while never daring to own its own existence, had
yet so mingled its enervating poison with every vein that he had now no
strength left to endure the disappointment so certain and so near. At the
very gate of his father's house he paused. A powerful impulse seized him
to fly. It was not yet too late. Why had he come? He would go back to
Boston, and write Laura by the next mail, and adjure her to tell him
nothing. Some time he might bear to hear the truth, but not to-day, not