"'Do you wish our engagement broken, Cousin Reuben?' she said, softly.
"'Wish it!' I cried out, forgetting prudence, resolution, everything but her. 'Oh, Bertha, I love you better than all the world!'
"'Then take me for your wife,' she said, coming over and pushing back the hair from my face. She kissed me and was gone.
"For a while I could not tell whether I was sleeping or waking, her words seemed so unreal. I stood like one in a trance; like one in some blissful dream, from which he fears to awaken. I could not realize that this peerlessly beautiful girl could be willing to marry me—a rough, homely, plodding farmer. I resolutely shut my heart against the bewildering conviction; but that evening, when we sat alone together, and I asked her to repeat what she had said, she smiled at my incredulity, and told me she intended to be my wife just as soon as our term of mourning expired, and that I might make known our engagement as soon as I liked.
"'It will save me from being persecuted by the attentions of other young men, you know, Cousin Reuben,' she said.
"Everybody was surprised when they heard of it, for she had rejected richer and far handsomer men; and for a while people refused to believe it. But when they saw us always together, and Bertha quietly confirmed the report, they were forced to the conviction that it really was true, and I was looked upon as the most fortunate and enviable of men.
"The next six months I was the happiest man in the world; and in nine more we were to be married, and go on a tour to Spain. It seemed too much happiness for me. I could not realize that it would ever prove true; and, alas! it never did.
"One day there came a letter from a school friend of Bertha's who lived in Westport, inviting her there on a visit. Bertha wished to go, and no one opposed her; but I saw her set out, with a sad forboding that this visit would prove fatal to my new-found happiness.
"Three months passed away before Bertha came back. She used to write to us at first long, gay, merry letters, telling us all about the place, and the people she met; but gradually her letters grew shorter, and more reserved, and less frequent, and for a month before her return, ceased altogether.
"I was half-crazed with anxiety, doubts, and apprehensions; and was about to set out for Westport to see if anything had happened, when one day the Stage stopped at the door, and Bertha alighted. Yes, Bertha—but so changed I hardly knew her; pale, cold, and reserved; she sang and laughed no longer; but used to sit for hours, her head on her hand, thinking and thinking. Bertha was bodily with us; but in spirit she was far away—where, I dared not ask. She hardly ever spoke now, but sat by herself in her own room, except at mealtimes. From me she shrank with a sort of dread, mingled with shame, coloring, and averting her head, when she met my eye; and, much as I loved her, I used ever after that to shun meeting her, lest it should give her pain.