The bright color faded from Maggie’s cheek, while her eyes grew darker than before, and still she did not speak.  Not that she was angry with him for asking her that question; but because the answer, which, if made at all, must be yes, was hard to utter.  And yet why should she hesitate to tell him the truth at once?

Alas, for thee, Maggie Miller!  The fancied love you feel for Henry Warner is fading fast away.  Arthur Carrollton is a dangerous rival, and even now you cannot meet the glance of his expressive eyes without a blush!  Your better judgment acknowledged his superiority to Henry long ago, and now in your heart there is room for none save him.

“Maggie,” he said, again stretching out his hand to take the unresisting one which lay upon her lap, “you need not make me other answer save that so plainly written on your face.  You are engaged, and may Heaven’s blessing attend both you and yours!”

At this moment Madam Conway appeared, and fearing her inability to control her feelings longer Maggie precipitately left the room.  Going to her chamber, she burst into a passionate fit of weeping, one moment blaming Mr. Carrollton for having learned her secret, and the next chiding herself for wishing to withhold from him a knowledge of her engagement.

“It is not that I love Henry less, I am sure,” she thought; and laying her head upon her pillow she recalled everything which had passed between herself and her affianced husband, trying to bring back the olden happiness with which she had listened to his words of love.  But it would not come; there was a barrier in the way—­Arthur Carrollton, as he looked when he said so sadly, “You need not tell me, Maggie.”

“Oh, I wish he had not asked me that question!” she sighed.  “It has put such dreadful thoughts into my head.  And yet I love Henry as well as ever—­I know I do; I am sure of it, or if I do not, I will,” and repeating to herself again and again the words, “I will, I will,” she fell asleep.

Will, however, is not always subservient to one’s wishes, and during the first few days succeeding the incident of that night Maggie often found herself wishing Arthur Carrollton had never come to Hillsdale, he made her so wretched, so unhappy.  Insensibly, too, she became a very little unamiable, speaking pettishly to her grandmother, disrespectfully to Mrs. Jeffrey, haughtily to Anna, and rarely to Mr. Carrollton, who after the lapse of two or three weeks began to talk of returning home in the same vessel with Anna Jeffrey, at which time his health would be fully restored.  Then, indeed, did Maggie awake to the reality that while her hand was plighted to one, she loved another—­not as in days gone by she had loved Henry Warner, but with a deeper, more absorbing love.  With this knowledge, too, there came the thought that Arthur Carrollton had once loved her, and but for the engagement now so much regretted he would ere this have told her so.  But it was too late! too late!  He would never feel toward her again as he once had felt, and bitter tears she shed as she contemplated the fast-coming future, when Arthur Carrollton would be gone, or shudderingly thought of the time when Henry Warner would return to claim her promise.