He's ever so proud of you." After a pause, during which Henry looked nervously from point to point about the room, he said-- "Is he ?" "Yes, very, and so am I." There was a long silence, and Laura took up her work-basket, and bent her face over it, and seemed to have a good deal of trouble in finding some article in it.
Suddenly he said, in a quick, spasmodic way-- "Is Madeline married ?" Good God! Would she never speak! "No," she answered, with a falling inflection.
His heart, which had stopped beating, sent a flood of blood through every artery.

But she had spoken as if it were the worst of news, instead of good.

Ah! could it be?
In all his thoughts, in all his dreams by night or day, he had never thought, he had never dreamed of that.
"Is she dead ?" he asked, slowly, with difficulty, his will stamping the shuddering thought into words, as the steel die stamps coins from strips of metal.
"No," she replied again, with the same ill-boding tone.
"In God's name, what is it ?" he cried, springing to his feet.

Laura looked out at the window so that she might not meet his eye as she answered, in a barely audible voice-- "There was a scandal, and he deserted her; and afterward--only last week--she ran away, nobody knows where, but they think to Boston." It was about two o'clock in the afternoon when Henry heard the fate of Madeline.

By four o'clock he was on his way back to Boston.