"

While these interesting events had been going on beneath the modest roof
of the Widow Hopkins, affairs had been rapidly hastening to a similar
conclusion under the statelier shadow of The Poplars. Clement Lindsay was
so well received at his first visit that he ventured to repeat it several
times, with so short intervals that it implied something more than a
common interest in one of the members of the household. There was no
room for doubt who this could be, and Myrtle Hazard could not help seeing
that she was the object of his undisguised admiration. The belief was
now general in the village that Gifted Hopkins and Susan Posey were
either engaged or on the point of being so; and it was equally understood
that, whatever might be the explanation, she and her former lover had
parted company in an amicable manner.

Love works very strange transformations in young women. Sometimes it
leads them to try every mode of adding to their attractions,--their whole
thought is how to be most lovely in the eyes they would fill so as to
keep out all other images. Poor darlings! We smile at their little
vanities, as if they were very trivial things compared with the last
Congressman's speech or the great Election Sermon; but Nature knows well
what she is about. The maiden's ribbon or ruffle means a great deal more
for her than the judge's wig or the priest's surplice.

It was not in this way that the gentle emotion awaking in the breast of
Myrtle Hazard betrayed itself. As the thought dawned in her
consciousness that she was loved, a change came over her such as the
spirit that protected her, according to the harmless fancy she had
inherited, might have wept for joy to behold, if tears could flow from
angelic eyes. She forgot herself and her ambitions,--the thought of
shining in the great world died out in the presence of new visions of a
future in which she was not to be her own,--of feelings in the depth of
which the shallow vanities which had drawn her young eyes to them for a
while seemed less than nothing. Myrtle had not hitherto said to herself
that Clement was her lover, yet her whole nature was expanding and
deepening in the light of that friendship which any other eye could have
known at a glance for the great passion.

Cynthia Badlam wrote a pressing letter to Murray Bradshaw. "There is no
time to be lost; she is bewitched, and will be gone beyond hope if this
business is not put a stop to."

Love moves in an