He had no time, before the cars started, to write, and I, therefore, bring you his verbal message." It had been the intention of Mr.Willet to accept any courteous invitation extended by the family to pass a part of the evening with them; but, seeing how troubled Mrs.Markland was at the absence of her husband, he thought it better to decline entering the house, and wait for a better opportunity to make their more intimate acquaintance.

So he bade her a good evening, after answering what further inquiries she wished to make, and returned to his own home.
Aunt Grace was unusually excited by the information received through their neighbour, and fretted and talked in her excited way for some time; but nothing that she said elicited any reply from Mrs.
Markland, who seemed half stupefied, and sat through the evening in a state of deep abstraction, answering only in brief sentences any remarks addressed to her.

It seemed to her as if her feet had wandered somehow into the mazes of a labyrinth, from which at each effort to get free she was only the more inextricably involved.

Her perceptions had lost their clearness, and, still worse, her confidence in them was diminishing.

Heretofore she had reposed all trust in her husband's rational intelligence; and her woman's nature had leaned upon him and clung to him as the vine to the oak.