t I love you, and have loved you all these years.
Leave me a little time, and I will do everything you wish."

"Let it be so, then," said John--"a short time, remember. My poor, dear
girl! My lost darling, so unexpectedly found."

And they walked away together down the gallery talking till their voices
and their steps died away. The thick yellow daylight was almost extinct
in the gallery by this time, and it was nearly dark behind the screen.
It was night at four o'clock in those days, and it was not till the
dressing-bell for dinner rang at near seven that I went, feeling my way
along the gallery, back to my own chamber. I do not know what I had been
doing in the meantime. A chorus of soft voices warbled in conversation
on the stairs as a band of graceful ladies tripped up to their several
apartments. Miss Leonard came to me in my rich, hot, heavy room and
helped me to dress. I told her I had come too soon, and had been
rambling about. I believe that was what I said. She fastened my sash,
and even tied my sandals, for my fingers were shaking. She bent over my
feet with her glorious face and her firm white hands. I think she had a
black velvet frock and a diamond waist buckle; but I am not sure. The
charm of her beauty overshone these things. As she busied herself among
my hooks and eyes, I saw our two reflections, in a glass--she who had
loved John for years, and I who had only known him for a few short
months.

As I went down the stairs with Rachel, I told myself it was true what
John said, that I should get over it. The drawing-room was full of gay
people, and my first thought was, looking round it, that there was no
man there equal to John--no woman there equal to Rachel. Why had I
thrust myself between them?

When John took my hand with just his old loving pressure, the first wave
of despair broke over me. "Get over it?" I asked myself; but that was
all. I believed that John was sitting by Rachel, but I did not see the
dinner-table, nor the people sitting at it. They thought I was shy or
proud, and did not trouble me with conversation. A sound was in my ears,
which I thought was like the rushing of a storm in an Indian forest. All
my life lay before me like a blot of ink on a bright page. Why must I
give trouble, and carry a sore heart? Why was I left behind to come to
Hillsbro'? Why did not my father and mother take me with them that I
might have died of their fever and been buried in their Indian grave?
But h