our last strength, has left us with strength enough to
bear a harder thing. It seemed so with such scenes as this, in those sunny
spring days when Annie Ware first went out into life again. Each day I
said, "There can never be another moment quite so hard to meet as this!"
and the next day there came a moment which made me forget the one which
had gone before.

It was an ill fortune which just at this time made it imperatively
necessary for George to go to the West for three months. He had no choice.
His mother's whole property was at stake. No one but he could save it; it
was not certain that he could. His last words to me were,--

"I trust more in you, Helen, than in any other human being. Keep my name
constantly in her thought; write me everything which you would tell me if
I were here."

It had become necessary now to tell the sad story of the result of Annie's
illness to all those friends who would be likely to speak to her of her
marriage. The whole town knew what shadow rested on our hearts; and yet,
as week after week went by, and the gay, sweet, winning, beautiful girl
moved about among people again in her old way, people began to say more
and more that it was, after all, very foolish for Annie Ware's friends to
be so distressed about her; stranger things had happened; she was
evidently a perfectly well woman; and as for the marriage, they had never
liked the match--George Ware was too old and too grave for her; and,
besides, he was her second cousin.

Oh, the torture of the "ante-mortems" of beloved ones, at which we are
all forced to assist!

Yet it could not be wondered at, that in this case the whole heart of the
community was alive with interest and speculation.

Annie Ware's sweet face had been known and loved in every house in our
village. Her father was the richest, most influential man in the county,
and the most benevolent. Many a man and woman had kissed Henry Ware's baby
in her little wagon, for the sake of Henry Ware's good deeds to them or
theirs. And while Mrs. Ware had always repelled persons by her haughty
reticence, Annie, from the first day she could speak until now, had won
all hearts by her sunny, open, sympathizing nature. No wonder that now,
when they saw her again fresh, glad, beautiful, and looking stronger and
in better health than she had ever done, they said that we were wrong,
that Annie and Nature were right, and that all would be well!

This spring there came to our town a