Troy, you will marry again some day?"
This point-blank query unmistakably confused her,
it was not till a minute or more had elapsed that
she said, "I have not seriously thought of any such
subject."
"I quite understand that. Yet your late husband
has been dead nearly one year, and -- "
"You forget that his death was never absolutely
proved, and may not have taken place; so that I may
not be really a widow." she said, catching at the straw of
escape that the fact afforded
"Not absolutely proved, perhaps, but it was proved
circumstantially. A man saw him drowning, too. No
reasonable person has any doubt of his death; nor
have you, ma'am, I should imagine.
"O yes I have, or I should have acted differently,"
she said, gently. "From the first, I have had a strange
uaccountable feeling that he could not have perished,
but I have been able to explain that in several ways
since. Even were I half persuaded that I shall see
him no more, I am far from thinking of marriage with
another. I should be very contemptible to indulge in
such a thought."
They were silent now awhile, and having struck into
an unfrequented track across a common, the creaks of
Boldwood's saddle and gig springs were all the
sounds to be heard.
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