"It is really very unseasonable weather--there is snow in the
atmosphere. I don't wonder it pinches Miriam," said Paul Douglass.
Ah! they did not either of them know that it was a spiritual fever and
ague alternately burning and freezing her very heart's blood--hope and
fear, love and loathing, pity and horror, that striving together made a
pandemonium of her young bosom. Like a flight of fiery arrows came the
coincidences of the tale she had heard, and the facts she knew. That
spring, eight years before, Mr. Murray said he had, unseen, witnessed
the marriage of Thurston Willcoxen and Marian. That spring, eight years
before, she knew Mr. Willcoxen and Miss Mayfield had been together on a
visit to the capital. Thurston had gone to Europe, Marian had returned
home, but had never seemed the same since her visit to the city. The
very evening of the house-warming at Luckenough, where Marian had
betrayed so much emotion, Thurston had suddenly returned, and presented
himself at that mansion. Yet in all the months that followed she had
never seen Thurston and Marian together, Thurston was paying marked and
constant attention to Miss Le Roy, while Marian's heart was consuming
with a secret sorrow and anxiety that she refused to communicate even to
Edith.
Pages:
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326