or two afterward? Were there not looks, and looks, and
looks? Or had she some misleading trick of vision in those days?
Justin's dark, handsome profile rose before her: the level brows and fine
lashes; the well-cut nose and lovable mouth--the Peabody mouth and chin,
somewhat too sweet and pliant for strength, perhaps. Then the eyes
turned to hers in the old way, just for a fleeting glance, as they had so
often done at prayer-meeting, or sociable, or Sunday service. Was it not
a man's heart she had seen in them? And oh, if she could only be sure
that her own woman's heart had not looked out from hers, drawn from its
maiden shelter in spite of all her wish to keep it hidden!

Then followed two dreary years of indecision and suspense, when Justin's
eyes met hers less freely; when his looks were always gloomy and anxious;
when affairs at the Peabody farm grew worse and worse; when his mother
followed her husband, the old Deacon, and her daughter Esther to the
burying-ground in the churchyard. Then the end of all things came, the
end of the world for Nancy: Justin's departure for the West in a very
frenzy of discouragement over the narrowness and limitation and injustice
of his lot; over the rockiness and barrenness and unkindness of the New
England soil; over the general bitterness of fate and the "bludgeonings
of chance."

He was a failure, born of a family of failures. If the world owed him a
living, he had yet to find the method by which it could be earned. All
this he thought and uttered, and much more of the same sort. In these
days of humbled pride self was paramount, though it was a self he
despised. There was no time for love. Who was he for a girl to lean
upon?--he who could not stand erect himself!

He bade a stiff good-bye to his neighbours, and to Nancy he vouchsafed
little more. A handshake, with no thrill of love in it such as might
have furnished her palm, at least, some memories to dwell upon; a few
stilted words of leave-taking; a halting, meaningless sentence or two
about his "botch" of life--then he walked away from the Wentworth
doorstep. But half way down the garden path, where the shrivelled
hollyhocks stood like sentinels, did a wave of something different sweep
over him--a wave of the boyish, irresponsible past when his heart had
wings and could fly without fear to its mate--a wave of the past that was
rushing through Nancy's mind, well-nigh burying her in its bitter-sweet
waters! Fo