But,
alas! there was no answering throb in her heart when she felt the touch
of his hand or his breath upon her cheek. She was only conscious of a
desire to avoid his caress, if possible, while, as the days went by, she
felt a growing disgust for "Abigail Jones," whose family, she gathered
from her lover, lived near to, and were quite familiar with, his mother.
In happy ignorance of her real feelings, so well did she dissemble
them, and so proper and ladylike was her deportment, Richard bade her
good-by early in May, and went back to his Western home, writing to her
often, but not such letters, it must be confessed, as were calculated to
win a maiden's heart, or keep it after it was won. If he was awkward at
love-making, and only allowed himself to be occasionally surprised into
flashes of tenderness, he was still more awkward in letter-writing; and
Ethelyn always indulged in a headache, or a fit of blues, after
receiving one of his short, practical letters, which gave but little
sign of the strong, deep affection he cherished for her. Those were hard
days for Ethelyn--the days which intervened between her lover's bidding
her adieu and his return to claim her hand--and only her deeply wounded
pride, and her great desire for a change of scene and a winter in
Washington, kept her from asking a release from the engagement she knew
never ought to have been.
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