, warmed-over, renovated love and the new. After Maria
laughed she sobbed. Then she checked her sobs and sat quite still and
fought, and presently a strange thing happened, which is not possible
to all, but is possible to some. With an effort of the will which
shocked her house of life, and her very soul, and left marks which
she would bear to all eternity, she put this unlawful love for the
lover of another out of her heart. She closed all her doors and
windows of thought and sense upon him, and the love was gone, and in
its place was an awful emptiness which yet filled her with triumph.

"I do not love him at all now," she said, quite aloud; and it was
true that she did not. She rose, pulled down her curtains, lighted
her lamp, and went to work.

Chapter XXVI

Maria, after that, went on her way as before. She saw, without the
slightest qualm, incredible as it may seem, George Ramsey devoted to
Lily. She even entered without any shrinking into Lily's plans for
her trousseau, and repeatedly went shopping with her. She began
embroidering a bureau-scarf and table-cover for Lily's room in the
Ramsey house. It had been settled that the young couple were to have
the large front chamber, and Mrs. Merrill's present to Lily was a set
of furniture for it. Mrs. Ramsey's old-fashioned walnut set was
stowed away. Maria even went with Mrs. Merrill to purchase the
furniture. Mrs. Merrill had an idea, which could not be subdued, that
Maria would have liked George Ramsey for herself, and she took a
covert delight in pressing Maria into this service, and descanting
upon the pleasant life in store for her daughter. Maria understood
with a sort of scorn Mrs. Merrill's thought; but she said to herself
that if it gave her pleasure, let her think so. She had a character
which could leave people to their mean and malicious delights for
very contempt.

"Well, I guess Lily's envied by a good many girls in Amity," said
Mrs. Merrill, almost undisguisedly, when she and Maria had settled
upon a charming set of furniture.

"I dare say," replied Maria. "Mr. Ramsey seems a very good young man."

"He's the salt of the earth," said Mrs. Merrill. She gave a glance of
thwarted malice at Maria's pretty face as they were seated side by
side in the trolley-car on their way home that day. Her farthest
imagination could discern no traces of chagrin, and Maria looked
unusually well that day in a new suit. However, she consoled herself
by thinking