Mrs. Hamilton thought quickly:
“Some country bumpkin that my brother has torn her from when he brought her home with him,” and, aloud, she answered soothingly:
“The very best advice I can give you, my dear niece, is that you should accept one of the devoted lovers always dangling after you now. In a happy marriage you would soon forget the fancy of your immature girlhood.”
“Do you really think so, auntie? I am so unhappy at times I would give the whole world just to forget.”
“You will never forget as long as you brood over the dead past, dear. Put it away from you and come out into the sunshine of a new love and hope,” was the tender reply, and Eva, drying her eyes, answered sadly:
“I have tried to, but I could not do it, and my heart seems breaking.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
REGINALD’S PROPOSAL.
Eva sank into a low chair and hid her face in her hands. The sound of her low, distressful sobbing filled the long drawing-room. It was a complete breakdown—one that her aunt had never witnessed in her before.
She was so young and childish when her father brought her home, she had never suspected a lover in her past, much less the tragedy of woe that had sent her into a madhouse and left its fatal impress on her life.