“Oh, Naughty Nan!” she said rousing herself, “I hope that you love him very, very much. Better than I know how to do!”
The paragraph ran in this fashion:
“I have had a very pretty present; I really believe that I like it better than any thing that Robert ever gave me. It is a ring with an onyx: on the stone is engraved two letters in monogram. You shall guess them, my counsellor, and it will not be hard when I whisper that one of them is T. I am very happy and very good. ‘Nan’s Experiment’ is burnt up and with it all my foolishness. ‘Such as I wish it to be.’ I think of that whenever I look at my ring. Tell me all about your lovely Miss Sarepta. I like to know how I shall have to behave before her. We are to be married next month.”
Did Nan know the hurt and the hurt and the hurt of love? No wonder that she was “shy” with Mrs. Towne. Why had not Mrs. Towne told her? Must she write and congratulate Naughty Nan whose story was such as she wished it to be?
The letters that she had written that evening were on the bureau; the sudden remembering of the line that she had written in Mrs. Towne’s brought her to her feet with a rush of shame like the old hot flashes from head to foot; she seized the letter and rolling it up tucked it down among the coals; it blazed, burning slowly, the flame curled around the words that she had been saved just in time from sending; the words that would never be written or spoken.
The room was chilly and the candle had burnt out before she went to bed; the lights opposite had long been out. The room was cold and dark and strange; outside in the darkness the night was wild.
It was too late; her conflict had lasted too long; her pride and disdain had killed his love for her; perhaps he felt as she did in that time when she had wanted some one to love her, and he had taken Naughty Nan as she had taken Felix.
She had lived it all through once; she could live it all through again; she could have slept, but would not for fear of the waking. Oh, if it would never come light, and she could lie forever shielded in darkness! But the light crept up higher and higher into the sky, Hilda passed the door, and Uncle Knox’s heavy tread was in the hall below.
Another day had come, and other days would always be coming; every day life must be full of work and play, even although Dr. Towne had failed in love that was patience; she had suffered once, because he was slow to understand himself, and plainly he had suffered to the verge of his endurance, because she was slow in understanding herself!
The day wore on to twilight; she had worked listlessly; in the twilight she laid her work aside, and went over to the cottage.