“I don’t know what I need to be advised about.”

“People never do.  It is more than three years ago that he told me that he had never thought of any one but you.”

“Why should he tell you that?” Marjorie’s tone could be sharp as well as her mother’s.

“I was talking about you.  I said you were not well—­I was afraid you were troubled—­and he told me—­that.”

“Troubled about what?” Marjorie demanded.

“About his not answering your letter,” in a wavering voice.

The words had to come; Mrs. West knew that Marjorie would have her answer.

“And—­after that—­he asked me—­to write to him.  Mother, mother, you do not know what you have done!”

Marjorie fled away in the dark up to her own little chamber, threw herself down on the bed without undressing, and lay all night, moaning and weeping.

She prayed beside; she could not be in trouble and not give the first breath of it to the Lord.  Hollis had asked her to write because of what her mother had said to him.  He believed—­what did he believe?

“O, mother! mother!” she moaned, “you are so good and so lovely, and yet you have hurt me so.  How could you?  How could you?”

While the clock in Mrs. Kemlo’s room was striking six, a light flashed across her eyes.  Her mother stood at the bedside with a lighted candle in her hand.

“I was afraid you would oversleep.  Why, child!  Didn’t you undress?  Haven’t you had anything but that quilt over you?”

“Mother, I am not going; I never want to see Hollis again,” cried Marjorie weakly.

“Nonsense child,” answered her mother energetically.

“It is not nonsense.  I will not go to New York.”

“What will they all think?”

“I will write that I cannot come.  I could not travel to-day; I have not slept at all.”

“You look so.  But you are very foolish.  Why should he not speak to me first?”

“It was your speaking to him first.  What must he think of me!  O, mother, mother, how could you?”

The hopeless cry went to her mother’s heart.

“Marjorie, I believe the Lord allows us to be self-willed.  I have not slept either; but I have sat up by the fire.  Your father used to say that we would not make haste if we trusted, and I have learned that it is so.  All I have done is to break your heart.”

“Not quite that, poor mother.  But I shall never write to Hollis again.”

Mrs. West turned away and set the candle on the bureau.  “But I can,” she said to herself.

“Come down-stairs where it is warm, and I’ll make you a cup of coffee.  I’m afraid you have caught your death of cold.”

“I am cold,” confessed Marjorie, rising with a weak motion.

Her new gray travelling dress was thrown over a chair, her small trunk was packed, even her gloves were laid out on the bureau beside her pocket-book.