"She is
never absent from my mind! I see her night and day, ay! I can feel her
soft arms clinging round my neck,--why dost thou ask so strange a
question, little one? Is it possible to forget what has been once
loved?"
Thelma was silent for many minutes. Then she kissed her father and said
"good night." He held her by the hand and looked at her with a sort of
vague anxiety.
"Art thou well, my child?" he asked. "This little hand burns like
fire,--and thine eyes are too bright, surely, for sleep to visit them?
Art sure that nothing ails thee?"
"Sure, quite sure," answered the girl with a strange, dreamy smile. "I
am quite well,--and happy!"
And she turned to enter the house.
"Stay!" called the father. "Promise me thou wilt think no more of
Lovisa!"
"I had nearly forgotten her," she responded. "Poor thing! She cursed me
because she is so miserable, I suppose--all alone and unloved; it must
be hard! Curses sometimes turn to blessings, father! Good night!"
And she ascended the one flight of wooden stairs in the house to her own
bedroom--a little three-cornered place as clean and white as the
interior of a shell.
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