I can see from the expression of Miss
Mayhew's face how I ought to meet this anniversary of a day that
once seemed to me like heaven's gate; but all I can do is just cling
to my hope in God, while I cry like a child that has lost itself
and all it loves in a thorny wilderness. I DO wish we could talk
frankly, but she is utterly unapproachable."
Poor Stanton stalked up and down on the piazza without, smoking
furiously and muttering strange oaths. If the troubles that preyed
upon the two maidens towards whom his heart was so tender, were
outward enemies, the smallest grain of discretion would have kept
them out of his way that night, and if Van Berg had quietly walked
up the piazza steps as Ida was expecting, he would have received
anything but a friendly greeting. That he did not come was
a disappointment to Ida, and yet deep in her heart there was a
secret satisfaction that he found it so difficult to enter on the
task that duty and honor demanded. "I shall see him at breakfast,
however," she thought; "and he'll be quiet, sane, and true to his
pledge."
But when she did not see him the next morning, and also learned
from Stanton that he had not been in his room during the night,
forebodings of some kind of evil began coming like prowling beasts
of he night that the traveler cannot drive very far away from his
camp-fire.
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