“Are you happy, John? All happy?”
Waring’s deep blue eyes fastened themselves on her face. His brown hair showed only a little gray at the temples, his fine face was not touched deeply by Time’s lines, and his clear, wholesome skin glowed with health.
If there was an instant’s hesitation before his reply came, it was none the less hearty and sincere. “Yes, my darling, all happy. And you?”
“I am happy, if you are,” she returned. “But I can never be happy if there is a shadow of any sort on your heart. Is there, John? Tell me, truly.”
“You mean regarding this trouble that I hear is brewing for me?”
“Not only that; I mean in any direction.”
“Trouble, Emily! With you in my arms! No,—a thousand times no! Trouble and I are strangers,—so long as I have you!”
CHAPTER II
MISS MYSTERY ARRIVES
Anyone who has arrived at the railroad station of a New England village, after dark on a very cold winter night, the train late, no one to meet him, and no place engaged for board and lodging, will know the desolation of such a situation.
New England’s small railroad stations are much alike, the crowds that alight from the trains are much alike, the people waiting on the platform for the arriving travelers are much alike, but there came into Corinth one night a passenger who was not at all like the fellow passengers on that belated train. It was a train from New York, due in Corinth at five-forty, but owing to the extreme cold weather, and various untoward freezings occasioned thereby, the delays were many and long and the train drew into the station shortly after seven o’clock.