CHAPTER I

EXTRACTS FROM MISS FRANCES THORNTON'S JOURNAL


ELMWOOD, June 15, 18--.

I have been out among my flowers all the morning, digging, weeding, and
transplanting, and then stopping a little to rest. Such perfect
successes as my roses are this year, while my white lilies are the
wonder of the town, and yet my heart was not with them to-day, and it
was nothing to me that those fine people staying at the Towers came into
the grounds while I was at work, "just to see and admire," they said,
adding that there was no place like Elmwood in all the town of
Cuylerville. I know that, and Guy and I have been so happy here, and I
loved him so much, and never dreamed what was in store for me until it
came so suddenly and seemed like a heavy blow.

Why did he want to get married, when he has lived to be thirty years
old, without a care of any kind, and with money enough to allow him to
indulge his taste for books, and pictures, and travel, and is respected
by everybody, looked up to as the first man in town, and petted and
cared for by me as few brothers have ever been petted and cared for;
why, I say, did he want a change, and, if he must be married, why need
he take a child of sixteen, whom he has only known since Christmas, and
whose sole recommendation, so far as I can learn, is her pretty face?