that James Marvyn wanted to marry Mary, and that she was--well--she
wasn't engaged to him, but"----

"Madam!" said the Doctor, in a voice that frightened Miss Prissy out of
her chair, while a blaze like sheet-lightning shot from his eyes, and
his face flushed crimson.

"Mercy on us! Doctor, I hope you'll excuse me; but there the fact
is,--I've said it out,--the fact is, they wa'n't engaged; but that Mary
loved him ever since he was a boy, as she never will and never can love
any man again in this world, is what I'm just as sure of as that I'm
standing here; and I've felt you ought to know it: 'cause I'm quite
sure, that, if he'd been alive, she'd never given the promise she
has,--the promise that she means to keep, if her heart breaks, and his
too. They wouldn't anybody tell you, and I thought I must tell you;
'cause I thought you'd know what was right to do about it."

During all this latter speech the Doctor was standing with his back to
Miss Prissy, and his face to the window, just as he did some time
before, when Mrs. Scudder came to tell him of Mary's consent. He made a
gesture backward, without speaking, that she should leave the
apartment; and Miss Prissy left, with a guilty kind of feeling, as if
she had been striking a knife into her pastor, and, rushing
distractedly across the entry into Mary's little bedroom, she bolted
the door, threw herself on the bed, and began to cry.

"Well, I've done it!" she said to herself. "He's a very strong, hearty
man," she soliloquized, "so I hope it won't put him in a
consumption;--men do go into a consumption about such things sometimes.
I remember Abner Seaforth did; but then he was always narrow-chested,