He clasped both her extended hands, and reminding himself of all he had heard, strove to hide his true feelings, while his mother, from the room back of them, watched the two in silence, still seeming to hear the cry he had uttered only a moment before,—
"Oh, mother, mother, I feel that my heart will break!"
Dorothy could not but observe the paleness of his face, and the traces as of recent tears showing about the blue eyes; but she attributed these to other than the real cause,—perhaps to matters arising between his mother and himself after their long separation.
"I am glad you have missed me sufficiently to make the time seem long to you, Dot," he replied, well aware, in the bitterness of his own heart, of how little this had to do with her show of emotion.
"Aye, I have missed you very much," she declared earnestly. "And so many sad things have happened since!"
"Yes—and so many that are not sad," he added significantly, desiring, since he might be expected to speak of her marriage, to have it over with.
A burning blush deepened the color in her cheeks. She drew away the hands he had been holding all this time, her eyes fell, and she seemed scarcely to know how to reply.
"I pray God you will be very happy, Dorothy." And his speaking her full name accentuated the gravity of his voice and manner.
"Thank you, Hugh," she replied, trying to smile: then, with a nervous laugh, "And when you return to Marblehead and see Polly Chine, I hope I may say the same to you."
The young man forced a laugh that well-nigh choked him. It had been hard enough to endure before he saw her. But even when he knew from her brother of her being forced into a marriage with this Britisher, his heart refused to relinquish all hope, despite what his friend had told him of Dorothy's own feeling toward her husband.