No, Helen had not.  And then she spoke of her fainting, telling how sudden it was and wondering if she was subject to such turns.  Marian Hazelton had made a strong impression on Helen’s mind, and she talked of her so much that Katy waited her appearance at the farmhouse with feverish anxiety.  It was evening when she came, looking very white, and seeming to Helen as if she had changed since she saw her first.  In her eyes there was a kind of hopeless, weary expression, while her smile made one almost wish to cry, it was so sad, and yet so strangely sweet.  Katy felt its influence at once, growing very confidential with the stranger, who, during the half hour in which they were accidentally left alone, drew from her every particular concerning her intended marriage.  Very closely the dark blue eyes scrutinized little Katy, taking in first the faultless beauty of her face, and then going away down into the inmost depths of her character, as if to find out what was there.

“Pure, loving, innocent, and unsuspecting,” was Marian Hazelton’s verdict, and she followed wistfully every movement of the young girl as she flitted around the room, chatting as familiarly with the dressmaker as if she were a friend long known instead of an entire stranger.

“You look very young to be married,” said Miss Hazelton to her once, and shaking back her short rings of hair Katy answered:  “Eighteen next Fourth of July; but Mr. Cameron is thirty.”

“Is he a widower?” was the next question, which Katy answered with a merry laugh.  “Mercy, no!  I marry a widower!  How funny!  I don’t believe he ever cared a fig for anybody but me.  I mean to ask him.”

“I would,” and the pale lips shut tightly together, while a resentful gleam shot for a moment across Marian’s face; but it quickly passed away, and her smile was as sweet as ever as she at last bade the family good-night and repaired to the little room where Wilford Cameron once had slept.

A long time she stood before the glass, brushing her dark, abundant hair, and intently regarding her own features, while in her eyes there was a hard, terrible look, from which Katy Lennox would have shrunk abashed.  But that too passed, and the eyes grew soft with tears as she turned away, and falling on her knees moaned sadly:  “I never will—­no, I never will, God help me to keep the promise.  Were it the other—­Helen—­I might, for she could bear it; but Katy, that child—–­no, I never will,” and as the words died on her lips there came struggling up from her heart a prayer for Katy Lennox’s happiness, as fervent and sincere as any which had ever been made for her since she was betrothed.