How could others--how could he--be kept in ignorance of that of which she was so painfully and vividly conscious?
Therefore, overwhelmed with dread and a sense of helplessness, she yielded to her first impulse to hide, in order that what seemed inseparable from herself might be concealed.
But she knew that this seclusion could not last--that she must meet this first and great emergency of her life in some other way.

From the strong wish to obtain safety in separation, a plan to bring it about gradually took form in her mind.

She must escape, either to live or to die, before her secret became known; and in casting about for the means, she at last thought of a family who had been the kindest of neighbors in the village where her mother had died.

Mr.Wayland and his wife had been the truest and most sympathetic of friends to the widow and her orphan children, and Madge felt that she could be at home with them.

Mrs.Wayland's prolonged ill-health had induced her husband to try, in her behalf, the remedy of an entire change of air and climate.