Helen blushed, but did not answer, and Stanton said, “Never fear for me, Fred, but rather keep your own heart safely locked away, for fear some of those dark-eyed Kentucky girls will, ere you are aware, rifle you of it.”

“I shall do no such thing,” returned Frederic.  “I am going there for the express purpose of losing my heart, and the first Kentucky girl which pleases me shall be my wife, any way.”

“Whether she likes you or not?” asked Nellie.

“Yes, whether she likes me or not,” answered Frederic, “I shall marry her first, and make her like me afterward.”

So saying he sauntered off to another part of the room, little thinking that what he had spoken in jest would afterward prove true.  At a late hour the company began to disperse, Miss Warner keeping a watchful eye upon her pupils, lest some lawless collegiate should relieve her from the trouble of seeing them safely home.  This perpendicular maiden had lived forty years on this mundane sphere without ever having had an offer, and she had come to think of gentlemen as a race of intruding bipeds which the world would be much better without.  However, if there were any of the species which she could tolerate, it was Judge Fulton and Robert Stanton.  The former she liked, because everybody liked him, and said he was a “nice man, and what everybody said must be true.”  Her partiality for the latter arose from the fact that he had several times complimented her fine figure and dignified manners; so when he that night asked the privilege of walking home with Nellie, she raised no very strong opposition, but yielded the point by merely saying something about “child’s play.”  She, however, kept near enough to them to hear every word of their conversation; but they consoled themselves by thinking that the wide-open ears could not penetrate the recesses of their well-filled letters which they saw in the future.

In a few days Stanton and Raymond started for Kentucky.  The evening before they left was spent by Stanton in Nellie’s company.  Mrs. Fulton had invited her to pass the night with her, as the Judge was absent from home.  About ten o’clock Mrs. Fulton very considerately grew sleepy, and retired to her own room.  But long after the town clock rang out the hour of midnight, a light might have been seen gleaming from the windows of Judge Fulton’s sitting room, in which sat Robert and Nellie, repeating for the hundredth time vows of eternal constancy.

The next morning when the last rumbling sound of the eastern train died away in the streets of Geneva, Nellie Ashton sat weeping in her little room at the seminary.  She felt that now she was again alone in the wide, wide world.  Eight years before she had in the short space of three weeks followed both father and mother to their last resting place, and upon their newly-made graves she had prayed the orphan’s prayer, that God would protect one who was without father, mother, brother or sister in the world.