II + 

By a disastrous chance did Bettie Hamlyn spend that spring, as well as the preceding year, in Colorado with her mother, who died there that summer; and to me Fairhaven proper without Bettie Hamlyn seemed a tawdry and desolate place; and I know that but for Mrs. Hamlyn’s illness⁠—a querulous woman for whom I never cared a jot⁠—my future life had been quite otherwise. For, as I told Bettie once, and it was true, I have found in the world but three sorts of humanity⁠—“Myself, and Bettie Hamlyn, and the other people.” + 

So I still wrote to Bettie Hamlyn on the seventh of every month⁠—because that was her birthday⁠—and again on the twenty-third, because that was mine. + 

And I thought of many things as I walked by the deserted garden, where there was nothing which concerned me now, not even a ghost. I did not go in to leave a card upon Professor Hamlyn. The empty house confronted me too blankly, with its tight-shuttered windows, like blind eyes, and I hurried by. + 