Ethelyn was never forgotten, whether in the capitol, or the street, or at home, or awake, or asleep.

Ethie's face and Ethie's form were everywhere, and if earnest, longing thoughts could have availed to bring her back, she would have come, whether across the rolling sea, or afar from the trackless desert.

But they could not reach her, Ethie did not come, and the term of Richard's governorship glided away, and he declined a re-election, and went back to Olney, looking ten years older than when he left it, with an habitual expression of sadness on his face, which even strangers noticed, wondering what was the heart trouble which was aging him so fast, and turning his brown hair gray.
For a time the stillness and quiet of Olney were very acceptable to him, and then he began to long for more excitement--something to divert his mind from the harrowing fear, daily growing more and more certain, that Ethie would never come back.

It was four years since she went away, and nothing had been heard from her since the letter sent to Andy from New York.

"Dead," he said to himself many a time, and but for the dread of the hereafter, he, too, would gladly have lain down in the graveyard where Daisy was sleeping so quietly.