floor. The very stir of the leaves on the trees could be heard. Mary
went into her little room, and threw herself upon the bed, weak, weary,
yet happy,--for deep and high above all other feelings was the great
relief that he was living still. After a little while she heard the
rattling of the wagon, and then the quick patter of Miss Prissy's
feet, and her mother's considerate tones, and the Doctor's grave
voice,--and quite unexpectedly to herself, she was shocked to find
herself turning with an inward shudder from the idea of meeting him.
"How very wicked!" she thought,--"how ungrateful!"--and she prayed that
God would give her strength to check the first rising of such feelings.

Then there was her mother, so ignorant and innocent, busy putting away
baskets of things that she had bought in provision for the
wedding-ceremony.

Mary almost felt as if she had a guilty secret. But when she reflected
upon the last two hours, she felt no wish to take them back again. Two
little hours of joy and rest they had been,--so pure, so perfect! she
thought God must have given them to her as a keepsake to remind her of
His love, and to strengthen her in the way of duty.

Some will, perhaps, think it an unnatural thing that Mary should have
regarded her pledge to the Doctor as of so absolute and binding force;
but they must remember the rigidity of her education. Self-denial and
self-sacrifice had been the daily bread of her life. Every prayer,
hymn, and sermon, from her childhood, had warned her to distrust her
inclinations and regard her feelings as traitors. In particular had she
been brought up to regard the sacredness of a promise with a
superstitious tenacity; and in this case the promise involved so deeply
the happiness of a friend whom she had loved and revered all her life,