All was very different from what she had expected in marrying her Corney. Also, from her weariness and anxiety in nursing him, and from other causes as well, her health was not what it had been. Then Hester’s letters were a little stiff. She felt it without knowing what she felt or why they made her uncomfortable. It was from no pride or lack of love they were such, but from Hester’s uncertainty—the discomfort of knowing they were no nearer a solution of their difficulty than when they parted at the station. She still did not know what she was going to do in the matter! This prevented all free flow of communication. Hester was unable to say what she would have liked to say, and unwilling to tell the uncomfortable condition of things, and thus there grew a gulf between her and her sister.

Amy naturally surmised that the family was not willing to receive her, and that the same unwillingness, though she was too good to yield to it, was in Hester also. But in fact, Hester knew that the main hope for her brother lay in his love for Amy and her devotion to him—in her common sense, her true, honest, bright nature. She was only far too good for Corney!

Then again Amy noted, for love and anxiety made her very sharp, that Miss Dasomma did not read to her every word of Hester’s letters. Once she stopped suddenly in the middle of a sentence, and after a pause went on with another. There must have been something she was not to know! Something must not be going right with her husband! Was he worse and they were afraid to tell her? Perhaps they were treating him as her aunts treated her—making his life miserable—and she was not with him to help him bear it!

She brooded over the matter, but not for long. At last she threw herself on her knees and begged her friend to tell her all that her sister’s letter had said.

“But, my dear,” said Miss Dasomma, “Hester and I have been friends for many years, and we may well have things to say to each other we should not care that even one we love as much as you to hear. A lady must not be inquisitive, you know.”

“I know, and I would never pry into other people’s affairs. But just tell me it was nothing about my husband and I shall be quite content.”

“But think a moment, Amy,” returned Miss Dasomma, who began to find herself in the midst of a difficulty, “there might be things between his family and him which they are not quite prepared to tell you until they know you better. Some people in the way they treated you would have been very different from that angel sister of yours! There is nobody like her that I know!”