THE TWO RINGS
thought that the friend of her childhood had absented himself all these seven years. "How can I believe," she thought, "that he has stayed away for so many years simply because he cannot forget me? Who knows whether he is alive or dead? It is not permitted to me to wish for the sight of him, now that I am another's wife. But why should I not hope and pray that my childhood's companion is still alive?"
About this time, her old father began to wear an anxious and harassed countenance, and finally fell seriously ill of a disease which caused his death. His wife refused to survive him. Hiranmayi had no other relatives than her parents, and entreated her mother with tears to change her fatal resolution, but the merchant's widow was obdurate. And so Hiranmayi was left all alone in the world.
Before dying, Hiranmayi's mother had tried to reassure her daughter. "See, my child," she had said, "you have no cause for anxiety. After all, you are a married woman. When
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