e, Percival, and you know I will really when I say I
promise."

He had answered her with tender and sorrowful firmness. "I knew your
letter was coming," he said. "I was as certain of it, and of what you
would say, as if I held it in my hand. But, Sissy, you wouldn't have
written so to me if I had been a rich man, as you hoped I should be; and
I can't take from your sweet pity what you couldn't give me when I asked
it for love's sake. It is impossible, dear, but I thank you from the
bottom of my heart, and I love you for it. I hardly know yet where I
shall go and what I shall do; but if I should want any help I will ask
it first of you, and I will be your friend and brother to my dying day."

Thus he closed the page of his life on which he had written that brief
story of love. Yet Sissy's letter was an inexpressible comfort to him.
It was something to know that elsewhere a little heart was beating--so
true and kind that it would have given up its own happiness--to help him
in his trouble.

A few days later Percival was going north in a slow train. On his right
sat a stout man with his luggage tied up in a dirty handkerchief. On his
left was an old woman in rusty black nursing an unpleasant grandchild,
who made hideous demonstrations of friendship to young Thorne. Opposite
was a soldier smoking vile tobacco, a clodhopping boy in corduroy, and a
big girl whose tawdry finery was a miracle of jarring and vulgar colors.

Never, I think, could a young hero have set forth to make his way
through the world with less hope than did Percival Thorne. He was
already disheartened and disgusted, and questioned within himself
whether life were worth having for those who went third-class. The slow
train and the lagging hours crawled onward through the dust and heat.
"And this," he thought, "should have been my wedding-day!"

CHAPTER XXXIV.

NO. 13 BELLEVUE STREET.

June gave way to July, July to August, August to September. Lottie
reigned at Brackenhill, and Mrs. Middleton, whose heart clung to the
neighborhood where she had lived so long, had taken a house on the other
side of Fordborough. Between it and her old home lay an impassable
gulf--none the less real that it was not marked on the county map. It
appeared there as a distance of five miles and a quarter, with a good
road, but Mrs. Horace Thorne, as well as Mrs. Middleton, knew better.
Lottie laughed, and Horace's resentment was so keen that he was almost
unconsciou