"
"No; I cannot understand this letter at all," replied the girl. "I
have thought of it frequently these terrible days. I have wondered
why it was that if he had friends in the city, he did not speak to
me of them. He repeatedly told me that he had no friends there at
all, that his life should begin anew after we were married."
"And did he have any particular plans, in a business way, perhaps?"
"No; he had a comfortable little income and need have no fear for
the future. John was, of course, too young a man to settle down
and do nothing. But the only definite plans he had made were that
we should travel a little at first, and then he would look about
him for a congenial occupation. I always thought it likely he
would resume a law practice somewhere. I cannot understand in the
slightest what the plans are to which the letter referred."
"And do you think, from what you know of his state of mind when
you saw him last, that he would be likely so soon to be planning
pleasures like this?"
"No, no indeed! John was terribly crushed when my guardian insisted
on breaking off our engagement. Until my twenty-fourth birthday I
am still bound to do as my guardian says, you know. John's life and
early misfortune made him, as I have already said, morbidly sensitive
and the thought that it would be a bar to anything we might plan in
the future, had rendered him so depressed that--and it was not the
least of my anxieties and my troubles--that I feared .
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