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 'Your engagement at the other place is ended?'

'Yes.'

'Where are you going to next? To join your dear husband?'

She could not bear the humiliating reminder.

'Oh—I don't know,' she said bitterly. 'I have no husband!'

'It is quite true—in the sense you mean. But you have a friend, and I have determined that you shall be comfortable in spite of yourself. When you get down to your house you will see what I have sent there for you.'

'O, Alec, I wish you wouldn't give me anything at all! I cannot take it from you! I don't like—it is not right!'

'It is right!' he cried firmly. I am not going to see a woman whom I feel so tenderly for, as I do for you, in trouble without trying to help her.'

'But I am very well off! I am only in trouble about—about—not about living at all!'

She turned, and desperately resumed her digging, tears dripping upon the fork-handle and upon the clods.