Perry Thomas saw it. He had gone away from her and wounded
her by his neglect. In the fabrication of the other girl, the
beautiful Edith, whose charms so outshone all other women, he had hit
at the heart of her vanity; and now he had come back so gayly and
easily to take from me what I might not have won in a lifetime. Losing
her, I cared little that what he had done had been in ignorance that I
loved her and that she was plighted to me. Losing her, I had no
thought of blame for the girl, for when she told me that in all the
world she cared for none so much as me, she meant it, for she believed
that he had passed out of her life.
By the fireplace, so close that I could put my hand upon the arm, was
the rocking-chair I had placed for her, and many a night had I sat
there watching it and smiling, and picturing it as it was to be when
she came. There would Mary be, sewing beneath the lamplight; there the
fire burning, with old Captain and young Colonel, snuggling along the
hearthstone; here I should be with my pipe and my book, unread, in my
lap, for we should have many things to talk of, Mary and I.
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