"I am not sorry you are my sister,"
sobbed Margaret through her tears. "That's the only comfort I have
left me now; but, Rose, I love Arthur Carrollton so much--oh, so much,
and how can I give him up!"
"If he is the noble, true-hearted man he looks to be, he will not give
you up," answered Rose, and then for the first time since this meeting
she questioned Margaret concerning Mr. Carrollton and the relations
existing between them. "He will not cast you off," she said, when
Margaret had told her all she had to tell. "He may be proud, but he
will cling to you still. He will follow you, too--not to-day, perhaps,
nor to-morrow, but ere long he will surely come;" and, listening to
her sister's cheering words, Maggie herself grew hopeful, and that
evening talked animatedly with Henry and Rose of a trip to the seaside
that they were intending to make. "You will go, too, Maggie," said
Rose, caressing her sister's pale cheek, and whispering in her ear,
"Aunt Susan will be here to tell Mr. Carrollton where you are, if he
does not come before we go, which I am sure he will."
Maggie tried to think so too, and her sleep that night was sweeter
than it had been before for many weeks--but the next day came, and the
next, and Maggie's eyes grew dim with watching and with tears, for up
and down the road, as far as she could see, there came no trace of him
for whom she waited.
"I might have known it; it was foolish of me to think otherwise," she
sighed; and, turning sadly from the window where all the afternoon she
had been sitting, she laid her head wearily upon the lap of Rose.
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