“It is very sad, I am sure it must be very sad, to love any one whose heart is not all given back in return. The anguish which I have felt during these few days has been so terrible, that I can well pity those who suffer with like doubts.”
“Can you? I think you are generous and good. Love like yours should be given to a worthy object.”
“It is! it is! I would stake my life upon his goodness.”
“And if it were yet proved otherwise?” said Catharine, turning her large eyes searchingly on the happy face of her companion.
“I think—I know,” answered the widow, with a shudder, “that it would kill me—I could not live after all this happiness, to be cast back even into doubt again.”
Catharine looked at her friend very mournfully for a moment.
“We suffer a great deal without dying,” she said; moving slowly away, she joined Elsie and the child.
CHAPTER LXXI.
QUESTIONS AND CONFESSIONS.
Catharine was alone with old Mrs. Ford. Excitement, and a wild sense of some mysteries which she had failed to fathom, made her bold. She plunged abruptly into a subject long upon her mind, but which she had never ventured to hint at before. Indeed, the quick crowding of painful thoughts, during the last few weeks, had rendered her desperate.
“Mrs. Ford!”