She listened through the long hours of that sunny morning.

It was the fifteenth of July--he made her note the day and in two years he would return to take her forever from the quiet house where her beauty and grace alike were buried.
That was the view of the matter that had seized upon the girl's imagination.

It was not so much love for Hugh--she liked him.

His flattery--the excitement of meeting him--his love, had become necessary to her; but had any other means of escape from the monotony she hated presented itself, she would have availed herself of it quite as eagerly.

Hugh was not so much a lover to her as a medium of escape from a life that daily became more and more unendurable.
She listened with bright smiles when he told her that in two years he should return to fetch her; and she, thinking much of the romance, and little of the dishonor of concealment, told him how her sad young mother hated and dreaded all mention of love and lovers.
"Then you must never tell her," he said--"leave that for me until I return.