“I cannot, cannot marry him,” she cried, “until I’ve torn that other image from my heart!” and then for many days she strove to recall the olden love in vain; for, planted on the sandy soil of childhood, as it were, it had been outgrown, and would never again spring into life.  “I will write to him exactly how it is,” she said at last; “will tell him that the affection I felt for him could not have been what a wife should feel for her husband.  I was young, had seen nothing of the world, knew nothing of gentlemen’s society, and when he came with his handsome face and winning ways my interest was awakened.  Sympathy, too, for his misfortune increased that interest, which grandma’s opposition tended in no wise to diminish.  But it has died out, that fancied love, and I cannot bring it back.  Still, if he insists, I will keep my word, and when he comes next autumn I will not tell him ‘No.’”

Maggie was very calm when this decision was reached, and opening her writing desk she wrote just as she said she would, begging him to forgive her if she had done him wrong, and beseeching Rose to comfort him as only a sister like her could do.  “And remember,” she wrote at the close, “remember that sooner than see you very unhappy, I will marry you, will try to be a faithful wife; though, Henry, I would rather not—­oh, so much rather not!”

The letter was finished, and then Maggie took it to her grandmother, who read it eagerly, for in it she saw a fulfillment of her wishes.  Very closely had she watched both Mr. Carrollton and Maggie, readily divining the truth that something was wrong between them.  But from past experience she deemed it wiser not to interfere directly.  Mr. Carrollton’s avowed intention of returning to England, however, startled her, and she was revolving some method of procedure when Margaret brought to her the letter.

“I am happier than I can well express,” she said, when she had finished reading it.  “Of course you have my permission to send it.  But what has changed you, Maggie?  Has another taken the place of Henry Warner?”

“Don’t ask me, grandma,” cried Maggie, covering her face with her hands; “don’t ask me, for indeed I can only tell you that I am very unhappy.”

A little skillful questioning on Madam Conway’s part sufficed to explain the whole—­how constant association with Arthur Carrollton had won for him a place in Maggie’s heart which Henry Warner had never filled; how the knowledge that she loved him as she could love no other one had faintly revealed itself to her on the night when he asked if she were engaged, and had burst upon her with overwhelming power when she heard that he was going home.

“He will never think of me again, I know,” she said; “but, with my present feelings, I cannot marry Henry, unless he insists upon it.”

“Men seldom wish to marry a woman who says she does not love them, and Henry Warner will not prove an exception,” answered Madam Conway; and, comforted with this assurance, Maggie folded up her letter, which was soon on its way to Cuba.