The bright, fixed color in Diana's face had meanwhile been slowly ebbing away, till, with cheeks and lips pale as ashes, she hastily rose and left the table and went to her room.

A strange, new, terrible pain--a sensation like being choked or smothered--a rush of mixed emotions--a fearful sense of some inexorable, unalterable crisis having come of her girlish folly--overwhelmed her.

Again she remembered the deep tones of his good-by, and how she had only mocked at his emotion.

She sat down and leaned her head on her hands in a tearless, confused sorrow.
Deacon' Pitkin was at first more shocked and overwhelmed than his wife.
His yesterday's talk with James had no such serious purpose.

It had been only the escape-valve for his hypochondriac forebodings of the future, and nothing was farther from his thoughts than having it bear fruit in any such decisive movement on the part of his son.