Maria understood.  She began talking to her of her future home in Amity, and the people whom she would see.  All at once Maria reflected how Lily would be married to George Ramsey when she returned, that she should see George’s wife going in and out the door that might have been the door of her own home, and she also had a keen pang of regret for the lack of regret.  She no longer loved George Ramsey.  It was nothing to her that he was married to Lily; but, nevertheless, her emotional nature, the best part of her, had undergone a mutilation.  Love can be eradicated, but there remains a void and a scar, and sometimes through their whole lives such scars of some people burn.

Chapter XXVIII

Evelyn was happier in Amity, with Maria and her aunt, than she had ever been.  It took a little while for her to grow accustomed to the lack of luxury with which she had always been surrounded; then she did not mind it in the least.  Everybody petted her, and she acquired a sense of importance which was not offensive, because she had also a sense of the importance of everybody else.  She loved everybody.  Love seemed the key-note of her whole nature.  It was babyish love as yet, but there were dangerous possibilities which nobody foresaw, except Henry Stillman.

“I don’t know what will become of that child when she grows up if she can’t have the man she falls in love with,” he told Eunice one night, after Maria and Evelyn, who had been in for a few moments, had gone home.

Eunice, who was not subtle, looked at him wonderingly, and her husband replied to her unspoken question.

“That child’s going to take everything hard,” he said.

“I don’t see what makes you think so.”

“She is like a harp that’s overstrung,” said Henry.

“How queer you talk!”

“Well, she is; and if she is now, what is she going to be when she’s older?  Well, I hope the Lord will deal gently with her.  He’s given her too many feelings, and I hope He will see to it that they ain’t tried too hard.”  Henry said this last with the half-bitter melancholy which was growing upon him.

“I guess she will get along all right,” said Eunice, comfortably.  “She’s a pretty little girl, and her mother has looked out for her clothes, if she did scoot off and leave her.  I wonder how long she’s going to stay in foreign parts?”

Henry shook his head.  “Do you want to know how long?” he said.

“Yes.  What do you mean, Henry?”

“She’s going to stay just as long as she has a good time there.  If she has a good time there she’ll stay if it’s years.”

“You don’t mean you think she would go off and leave that darling little girl a whole year?”

“I said years,” replied Henry.

“Land!  I don’t believe it.  You’re dreadful hard on women, Henry.”

“Wait and see,” said Henry.