When I next saw our Annie she was Edward Neal’s promised bride.  A severe fit of illness, the result of all these excitements, confined me to my room for three weeks after George’s departure; and I knew only from Aunt Ann’s lips the events which had followed upon it.

George Ware’s presence on that first evening had brought revelation to Edward Neal as well as to all the other members of that circle.  That very night he had told his parents that Annie would be his wife.

The next night, while poor George was swiftly borne away, Edward was sitting in my uncle’s library, listening with a blanched cheek to the story of Annie’s old engagement.  My uncle’s sense of honor would not let him withhold anything from the man seeking her for his wife.  The pain soon passed by, when he was told that she had that very day refused her cousin, and betrayed almost resentment at his offer.  Edward Neal had not a sufficiently subtle nature, nor acquaintance enough with psychological phenomena to be disturbed by any fears for the future.  He dismissed it all as an inexplicable result of the disease, but a fixed fact, and a great and blessed fortune for him.  My uncle, however, was less easily assured.  He insisted upon delay, and upon consulting the same physicians who had studied Annie’s case before.  They all agreed that she was now a perfectly healthy and strong woman, and that to persist in any farther recognition of the old bond, after she had so intelligently and emphatically repudiated all thought of such a relation to her cousin, was absurd.  Dr. Fearing alone was in doubt, He said little; but he shook his head and clasped his hands tight, and implored that at least the marriage should be deferred for a year.

Annie herself, however, refused to consent to this:  of course no satisfactory reason could be alleged for any such delay; and she said as frankly as a little child, “Edward and I have loved each other almost from the very first; there is nothing for either of us to do in life but to make each other happy; and we shall not leave papa and mamma:  so why should we wait?”

They were not married, however, until spring.  The whole town stood by in speechless joy and delight when those two beautiful young beings came out from the village church man and wife.  It was a scene never to be forgotten.  The peculiar atmosphere of almost playful joyousness which they created whenever they appeared together was something which could not be described, but which diffused itself like sunlight.

We all tried resolutely to dismiss memory and misgiving from our hearts.  They seemed disloyalty and sin.  George Ware was in India.  George Ware’s mother was dead.  The cottage among the pines was sold to strangers, and the glistening brown paths under the trees were neglected and unused.