to be able to state that the (to her) unfortunate engagement was broken almost a year since."
"What do you mean? How did it happen? And to think we never heard a breath of it! Sit down here—there's a darling! and tell us all about it!" entreated Selina, leading the in no wise reluctant narrator to a sofa just behind Jessie.
"Perhaps you had rather not, Hester !" interposed gentle Fanny. "Such stories are painful to those interested in either of the parties to the engagement, and the telling does no good. The fewer people that know of them the better, I think."
"Oh! I don't mind it in the least, now!" Hester hastened to assure her. She settled the voluminous skirt of her purple cashmere peignoir about her, disposed her ringed fingers to her satisfaction upon her lap, and looked smirkingly sentimental. "There was a period in which I could not allude to, or think of it without tears. But time deadens all griefs, and even my poor friend confesses that it was best the affair should have terminated as it did. She met Mr. Fordham at the sea-shore summer before last. He fell in love with her at first sight, for she is a lovely girl—a blonde, with blue eyes and a red rosebud of a mouth, and golden hair, and the sweetest disposition!"
"She must be a real beauty!" sighed Selina, in an agony of admiration.
"She is! People pretend to discern a resemblance between us; but that is all nonsense," said Hester, modestly. "I should be supremely happy if I were half as handsome as Maria. But I love her too dearly to be envious. We are like twin sisters in heart. I dare say that is the reason we are so often mistaken for one another. We go out so much together, you see, that the sight of one reminds people of the other. But, as I was saying, this Mr. Fordham pretended to be violently smitten with her, and followed her home. Her parents liked him. He is rather an imposing man, you know, and has some reputation as a scholar. So when he paid her a second visit last winter, and offered himself, there was no objection raised to the match. Poor, dear Maria! how happy she was! All went smoothly for about six weeks, when, without a moment's warning, he broke the engagement. And why, do you suppose? He had heard that one of her sisters had died of consumption several years before, and he could not run the risk of having a sickly wife!"
She waited until the chorus of reprobation subsided, then resumed:
"He wrote to her. Iron man as he was, he was afraid to trust himself in her presence. He regretted the necessity that forced him to this unpleasant step, he said, but he owed a duty to himself, which was not to be lightly put aside. He should always remain her friend, and all that sort of rubbish, you know. The broken-hearted creature stooped to remonstrate. She loved him devotedly and had had no other love. Had I been in her place, I would have died sooner than let him know how I suffered, but she was such a lamb-like, gentle creature, and her spirit was utterly crushed. She wrote to him, imploring him not to leave her, representing that there was not a sign of hereditary consumption in the family; that her parents were living, and that her grandparents on both sides had all died from other diseases; but he was obstinate. 'He would never,' he replied, 'in any circumstances marry a woman who was not perfectly sound in body and in mind.' He persisted in believing that she had the seeds of a fatal malady in her system, and even was so unkind as to allude to her beautiful color as a hectic flush. So, he cast her off."
