"She will have a better impression of her new home then," he said to

Fan; "and I want her to be happy here and not feel the change too

keenly."

Julia Hamilton chanced those days to be in town, and as she was very

intimate with Miss Thornton the two were a great deal together, and it

thus came about that Julia was often at the brown cottage and helped to

settle the blue room for Daisy.

"If it were only you who was to occupy it," Frances said to her one

morning when they had been reading together for an hour or more in the

room they both thought so pleasant. "I like Daisy, but somehow she seems

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so far from me. Why, there's not a sentiment in common between us."

Then, as if sorry for having said so much, she spoke of Daisy's

marvelous beauty and winning ways, and hoped Julia would know and love

her ere long, and possibly do her good.

It so happened that Guy was sometimes present at these readings,

enjoying them so much that there insensibly crept into his heart a wish

that Daisy was more like the Boston girl whom he had mentally termed

strong-minded.

"And in time, perhaps, she may be," he thought. "I mean to have Julia

here a great deal next summer, and with two such women for companions as

Julia and Fan, Daisy cannot help but improve."

And so at last, when the house was settled and the early spring flowers

were in bloom, Guy started westward for his wife. He had not seen her

now for months, and it was more than two weeks since he had heard from

her, and his heart beat high with joyful anticipation as he thought just

how she would look when she came to him, shyly and coyly, as she always

did, with that droop in her eyelids and that pink flush in her cheeks.

He would chide her a little at first, he said, for having been so poor a

correspondent, especially of late, and after that he would love her so

much, and shield her so tenderly from every want or care, that she

should never feel the difference in his fortune.

Poor Guy--he little dreamed what was in store for him just inside the

door where he stood ringing one morning early in May, and which, when at

last it was opened, shut in a very different man from the one who went

through it three hours later, benumbed and half-crazed with bewilderment

and surprise.




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