It was all her stepmother's doings--right well I
knew that. My dearie would never have taken Mark Foster else.
"Don't let us talk of that," she said, soft and beseeching, just
the same way she used to speak when she was a baby-child and
wanted to coax me into something. "Let us talk about the old
days--and HIM."
"I don't see much use in talking of HIM, when you're going to
marry Mark Foster to-day," I said.
But she put her hand on my mouth.
"It's for the last time, Aunt Rachel. After to-day I can never
talk of him, or even think of him. It's four years since he went
away. Do you remember how he looked, Aunt Rachel?"
"I mind well enough, I reckon," I said, kind of curt-like. And I
did. Owen Blair hadn't a face a body could forget--that long
face of his with its clean color and its eyes made to look love
into a woman's. When I thought of Mark Foster's sallow skin and
lank jaws I felt sick-like. Not that Mark was ugly--he was just
a common-looking fellow.
"He was so handsome, wasn't he, Aunt Rachel?" my dearie went on,
in that patient voice of hers. "So tall and strong and handsome.
I wish we hadn't parted in anger. It was so foolish of us to
quarrel. But it would have been all right if he had lived to
come back. I know it would have been all right. I know he
didn't carry any bitterness against me to his death. I thought
once, Aunt Rachel, that I would go through life true to him, and
then, over on the other side, I'd meet him just as before, all
his and his only.
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