child she had lost, and she
willingly came in to help about the kitchen and parlor work, while her
husband looked after the horses and cattle as well as he could, and
tended the furnaces, and saw that the plants in the greenhouses did not
freeze. He was up early and late; he had no poetic loyalty to the
Northwicks; but as nearly as he could explain his devotion, they had
always treated him well, and he could not bear to see things run behind.

Day after day went by, and week after week, and the sisters lived on in
the solitude to which the compassion, the diffidence, or the contempt of
their neighbors left them. Adeline saw Wade, whenever he came to the
house, where he felt it his duty and his privilege to bring the
consolation that his office empowered him to offer in any house of
mourning; but Suzette would not see him; she sent him grateful messages
and promises, when he called, and bade Adeline tell him each time that
the next time she hoped to see him.

One of the ladies of South Hatboro', a Mrs. Munger, who spent her
winters as well as her summers there, penetrated as far as the library,
upon her own sense of what was due to herself as a neighbor; but she
failed to find either of the sisters. She had to content herself with
urging Mrs. Morrell, the wife of the doctor, to join her in a second
attempt upon their privacy; but Mrs. Morrell had formed a notion of
Suzette's character and temper adverse to the motherly impulse of pity
which she would have felt for any one else in the girl's position. Mrs.
Gerrish, the wife of the leading merchant in Hatboro', who distinguished
himself by coming up from Boston with Northwick, on the very day of the
directors' meeting, would have joined Mrs. Munger, but her husband
forbade her. He had stood out against the whole community in his belief
in Northwick's integrity and solvency; and while every one else accused
him of running away as soon as he was reported among the missing in the
railroad accident, Gerrish had refused to admit it. The defalcation came
upon him like thunder out of a clear sky; he felt himself disgraced
before his fellow-citizens; and he resented the deceit which Northwick
had tacitly practised upon him. He was impatient of the law's delays in
seizing the property the defaulter had left behind him, and which was
now clearly the property of his creditors. Other people in Hatboro',
those who had been the readiest to suspect Northwick, cherished a guilty
lenienc