“A fortnight afterwards I received a letter from Josiah.  He thanked me for my advice, but added, incidentally, that he wished I could have made it Julia.  However, he said, he felt sure I knew best, and by the time I received the letter he and Hannah would be one.

“That letter worried me.  I began to wonder if, after all, I had chosen the right girl.  Suppose Hannah was not all I thought her!  What a terrible thing it would be for Josiah.  What data, sufficient to reason upon, had I possessed?  How did I know that Hannah was not a lazy, ill-tempered girl, a continual thorn in the side of her poor, overworked mother, and a perpetual blister to her younger brothers and sisters?  How did I know she had been well brought up?  Her father might be a precious old fraud:  most seemingly pious men are.  She may have learned from him only hypocrisy.

“Then also, how did I know that Juliana’s merry childishness would not ripen into sweet, cheerful womanliness?  Her father, for all I knew to the contrary, might be the model of what a retired sea-captain should be; with possibly a snug little sum safely invested somewhere.  And Juliana was his only child.  What reason had I for rejecting this fair young creature’s love for Josiah?

“I took her photo from my desk.  I seemed to detect a reproachful look in the big eyes.  I saw before me the scene in the little far-away home when the first tidings of Josiah’s marriage fell like a cruel stone into the hitherto placid waters of her life.  I saw her kneeling by her father’s chair, while the white-haired, bronzed old man gently stroked the golden head, shaking with silent sobs against his breast.  My remorse was almost more than I could bear.

“I put her aside and took up Hannah—­my chosen one.  She seemed to be regarding me with a smile of heartless triumph.  There began to take possession of me a feeling of positive dislike to Hannah.

“I fought against the feeling.  I told myself it was prejudice.  But the more I reasoned against it the stronger it became.  I could tell that, as the days went by, it would grow from dislike to loathing, from loathing to hate.  And this was the woman I had deliberately selected as a life companion for Josiah!

“For weeks I knew no peace of mind.  Every letter that arrived I dreaded to open, fearing it might be from Josiah.  At every knock I started up, and looked about for a hiding-place.  Every time I came across the heading, ‘Domestic Tragedy,’ in the newspapers, I broke into a cold perspiration.  I expected to read that Josiah and Hannah had murdered each other, and died cursing me.

“As the time went by, however, and I heard nothing, my fears began to assuage, and my belief in my own intuitive good judgment to return.  Maybe, I had done a good thing for Josiah and Hannah, and they were blessing me.  Three years passed peacefully away, and I was beginning to forget the existence of the Hacketts.