From an independent, self-reliant, energetic girl of twenty-two Julia
had ripened into a noble and dignified woman of twenty-seven, with a
quiet repose of manner which seemed to rest and quiet one, and which
told insensibly on Guy, until at last he found himself dreading to have
her go and wishing to keep her with him always. The visit was lengthened
into a month; and when in November he went with her to Boston he had
asked her to take Daisy's place, and she had said she would. Very freely
they had talked of the little golden-haired girl, and Julia told him
what she had heard of her through a mutual acquaintance who had been on
the same vessel with the McDonalds when they returned from South
America. Cousin Tom was with them, a rich man then and a richer now, for
his gold mine and his railroad had made him almost a millionaire, and it
was currently reported and believed that Mr. McDonald designed him for
his daughter. They were abroad now, the McDonalds and Tom, who bore the
expenses of the party. Daisy, it was said, was even more beautiful than
in her early girlhood, and to her loveliness were added cultivation and
refinement of manner. She had had the best of teachers while in South
America, and was now continuing her studies abroad with a view to
further improvement. All this Julia Hamilton told Guy, and then bade him
think again ere deciding to join her life with his.

And Guy did think again, and his thoughts went across the sea after the
beautiful Daisy, and he tried to picture to himself what she must be,
now that education and culture had set their seal upon her. But always
in the picture there was a dark background, where cousin Tom stood
sentinel with his bags of gold, and so, with a half-unconscious sigh for
what "might have been," Guy dug still deeper the grave where years
before he had buried his love for Daisy, and to make the burial sure
this time, so that there should be no future resurrection, he put over
the grave a head-stone on which were written a new hope and a new love,