"He proposed to me. Smother your anger; he didn't care for me; some one
told him that I cared for him."

"Did you?"

"This is what the Inquisition calls applying the question?" asked Mrs.
Purcell. "Nonsense, dear child! he was quite in love with somebody
else."

"And that was----?"

"He supposed your mother to be a widow. Well, if you won't come, I shall
go alone and read my 'L'Allegro' under the boughs, with breezes blowing
between the lines. I can show you some little field-mice like unfledged
birds, and a nest that protrudes now and then glittering eyes and cleft
fangs."

Marguerite was silent; the latter commodity was _de trop_. Mrs. Purcell
adjusted her parasol and passed on.

Here, then, was the whole affair. Marguerite pressed her hands to her
forehead, as if fearful some of the swarming thoughts should escape;
then she hastened up the slope behind the house, and entered and hid
herself in the woods. Mr. Raleigh had loved her mother. Of course, then,
there was not a shadow of doubt that her mother had loved him. Horrible
thought! and she shook like an aspen, beneath it. For a time it seemed
that she loathed him,--that she despised the woman who had given him
regard. The present moment was a point of dreadful isolation; there was
no past to remember, no future to expect; she herself was alone and