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The one was his wife, whom he respected greatly, and to whose wishes he
sacrificed every wish of his own, when he could conscientiously do so;
the other was the woman he had loved in the long ago, and whose "no,"
spoken so decidedly, and with no explanation except that it must be, had
sent him from her with a heart-ache from which he now knew he had never
fully recovered.
Twelve years after that summer, the memory of which was still half joy,
half pain, he had married Miss Martha Adams, of Cambridge, because a
mutual friend had told him he ought to do so, that a bachelor clergyman
was never as useful as a married one, and that Miss Martha, a maiden
lady of thirty-five, was eminently fitted to fulfill the duties of a
rector's wife, for she came from a long line of clergy and for years had
run the Sunday-school, and the sewing society, and the church generally
in the parish to which she belonged. Added to this she had some money
and excellent health, two good things in a minister's wife as everybody
knew.


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