She sank wearily into an armchair.  It seemed to her that her limit of endurance had been reached, but he, taking her silence for acquiescence, lost no time in following up what he fondly hoped might be an advantage.  “I did not go to the Putnams to-night, Anna, because you were not going, and there is no enjoyment for me when you are not there.”

“Mr. David, if you continue to talk to me like this I shall have to leave this house.”

“Tell me, Anna,” he said so gravely that the woman beside him knew that life and death were balanced with her words:  “tell me, when you said that day last autumn by the well that you never intended to marry, was it just a girl’s coquetry or was there some deeper reason for your saying so?”

She could not face the love in those honest eyes and answer as her conscience prompted.  She was tired, so tired of the struggle, what would she not have given to rest here in the shelter of this perfect love and trust, but it was not for her.

“Mr. David,” she said, looking straight before her with wide, unseeing eyes; “I can be no man’s wife.”

He knew from the lines of suffering written deep on the pale young face, that maiden coquetry had not inspired her to speak thus; but word for word, it had been wrung from out of the depths of a troubled soul.

“Anna!” cried David, in mingled astonishment and pain.  But Anna only turned mutely toward him with an imploring look.  She stretched out her hands to him, as if trying to tell him more.  But words failed her.  Her tears overcame her and she fled, sobbing, to her room.  All the way up the winding night of stairs, David could hear her anguished moans.  He would have followed her, but Hi burst into the room, stamping the snow from his boots.  He shoved in the front door as if he had been an invading army.  He unwound his muffler and cast it from him as if he had a grudge against it, as he proceeded to deliver himself of his wrongs.

“If there’s any more visitors coming to the house to-night that wants their horses held, they can do it themselves, for I am going to have my supper.”  David made no reply, but went to his own room to brood over the day’s events.  And so Anna was spared any further talk with David that night; a circumstance for which she was devoutly thankful.

The next day the snow was deeper by a foot, but this did not deter the Squire from making his proposed trip to Belden.  He started immediately after breakfast, prepared to sift matters to the bottom.

An air of tension and anxiety pervaded the household all that long, miserable day.  Anna was tortured with doubts.  Should she slip away quietly without telling, or should she make her humiliating confession to Kate?  Mrs. Bartlett, who knew the object of her husband’s errand, could not control her nerves.  She knew intuitively “that something was going to happen,” as the good soul put it to herself.