January 26. Our engagement is broken. George is gone, and the memory of six years, he says, had better be wiped out.
January 27. I could not tell Mother to-day. By the time I got my courage up it was afternoon, and I feared lest she should be too excited to sleep to-night. To-morrow morning she must know.
[II]
FEBRUARY
February 1. I wonder sometimes if human pride is not stronger than human affection. Certainly it seems sometimes that we feel the wound to vanity more than the blow to love. I suppose that the truth is that the little prick stings where the blow numbs. For the moment it seemed to me to-night as if I felt more the sudden knowledge that the village knows of my broken engagement than I did the suffering of the fact; but I shall have forgotten this to-morrow, and the real grief will be left.
Miss Charlotte, tall and gaunt, came in just at twilight. She brought a lovely moss-rose bud.
"Why, Miss Charlotte," I said, "you have never cut the one bud off your moss-rose! I thought that was as dear to you as the apple of your eye."
"It was," she answered with her gayest air. "That's why I brought it."
"Mother will be delighted," I said; "that is, if she can forgive you for picking it."