She felt she deserved any grief that came to her, and it would have been cowardly, she thought, to shrink from what she had undertaken merely because she had been so far mercifully spared the grief of Mrs.
Forsythe's death.

And who could tell that she would live, even yet?
Certainly Mrs.Forsythe herself seemed to consider her recovery a matter of grave doubt, and Lois's anxieties were quick to agree with her.
So she went about with a white face and eyes from which all the careless gayety had gone, simply bearing her life with a dull pain and in constant fear.

Gifford saw it, and misunderstood it; he thought, in view of what Miss Deborah had told him and what he knew of Mr.Forsythe's plans, that it was natural for Lois to look unhappy.

Anxieties are very misleading; the simple explanation of remorse for her carelessness did not come into Gifford's mind at all.
One afternoon,--it was the day following Mr.Denner's funeral,--Gifford thought this all over, and tried to see what his life offered him for the future, now that the last faint hope of winning Lois's love had died.

Mr.
Denner's will had been read that morning in his dining-room, with only Dr.Howe and Mary and Willie present, while the rain beat persistently against the windows, and made the room so dark that Gifford had to call for a candle, and hold the paper close to his eyes to see to read.