did she dream
that he was false to her--to her, a portion of his own life!

How it was with him there were numberless ways in which she might have
discovered, for every soul of her acquaintance knew Andrew, and must be
aware of the fact if he were missing or ailing, or if any other ill chance
had befallen him. But as often as she tried to address one or another
passing by the window, her voice failed her and her heart, and she asked
no questions, and only waited on. A life of suspense, exclaims some one, a
life of a spider! And when we are in suspense, says another, all our aids
are in suspense with us. Day after day she stayed continually in the
house, looking for him to come, never stirring out even into the garden,
lest coming she might miss him. Night after night she sat alone at her
window till the distant town-clocks struck midnight--now picturing to
herself the glad minute of his coming, the quick explaining words, the
bursting tears of relief, the joy of that warm embrace, the touch of those
strong arms--now convinced that he would never come, and her heart sinking
into a bitter loneliness of despair.

It grew worse with her when she knew that he was really in the town, alive
and well; for, from the scuttle in the roof, by the aid of her father's
glass, she could see the Sabrina, and one day she was sure that a form
whose familiar outlines made her pulses leap was Andrew himself giving
orders on the deck there; and after that she tortured herself with
conjectures till her brain was wild--chained hand and foot, unable to
write him or to seek him in any maidenly modesty, heart and soul in a
ferment. Still she waited in that shuddering suspense, with every nerve so
tightly strung, that voice or footfall vibrated on them into pain. If
Andrew, in the midst of the gayeties by which he found himself accepted of
the Maurices' friends, was never haunted by any thought of all this, his
heart had grown stouter in one year's time than twenty years had found and
left it previously.

But Louie's suspense was of no long duration, as time goes, though to her
it was a lifetime. A week covered it--a week full of stings and fevered
restlessness--when her father came in one day and said bitterly, thinking
it best to make an end of all at once: "So I hear that a friend of ours
has been paid off at last. Captain Andrew Traverse of the Sabrina is going
to marry his owner's daughter Frarnie. Luck will take passage on that
brig!" And