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Rachel led a life that many people would envy -- she had an interesting and challenging job and an attractive boyfriend who showered her with attention.

She didn't know the rules of engagement. Getting engaged to Marc van Borsele was the last thing Claribel wanted. Marc was the most annoying and exasperating man she had ever met!

Dutch surgeon Sebastian van Tecqx had offered Emily's father the chance of a life-changing operation. But favors don't come cheap, and he expected something in return.

Most of Hawthorne's early writings were magazine stories subsequently collected in books. His second story collection, Mosses from an Old Manse, includes many of his best-known short stories.

The story begins in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, then a Puritan settlement.