when there had been hope for her in
the newness of her calamity, before she had yet fully imagined it.

Jeff made no answer to her last words. He asked, "Am I going to see you
again?"

"I guess not. I don't believe I shall be up before you start."

"All right. Good-bye, then." He held out his hand, and she put hers in
it for the moment he chose to hold it. Then he turned and slowly climbed
the hill.

Cynthia was still lying with her face in her pillow when her father
came into the dark little house, and peered into her room with the newly
lighted lamp in his hand. She turned her face quickly over and looked at
him with dry and shining eyes.

"Well, it's all over with Jeff and me, father."

"Well, I'm satisfied," said Whitwell. "If you could ha' made it up, so
you could ha' felt right about it, I shouldn't ha' had anything to say
against it, but I'm glad it's turned out the way it has. He's a comical
devil, and he always was, and I'm glad you a'n't takin' on about him any
more. You used to have so much spirit when you was little."

"Oh,--spirit! You don't know how much spirit I've had, now."

"Well, I presume not," Whitwell assented.

"I've been thinking," said the girl, after a little pause, "that we
shall have to go away from here."

"Well, I guess not," her father began. "Not for no Jeff Dur--"

"Yes, yes. We must! Don't make one talk about it. We'll stay here till
Jackson gets back in June, and then--we must go somewhere else. We'll go
down to Boston, and I'll try to get a place to teach, or something, and
Frank can get a place."

"I presume," Whitwell mused, "that Mr. Westover could--"

"Father!" cried the girl, with an energy that startled him, as she
lifted herself on her elbow. "Don't ever think of troubling Mr.
Westover! Oh," she lamented, "I was thinking of troubling him myself!
But we mustn't, we mustn't! I should be so ashamed!"

"Well," said Whitwell, "time enough to think about all that. We got two
good months yet to plan it out before Jackson gets back, and I guess we
can think of something before that. I presume," he added, thoughtfully,
"that when Mrs. Durgin hears that you've give Jeff the sack, she'll make
consid'able of a kick. She done it when you got engaged."

XLVII.

After he went back to Cambridge, Jeff continued mechanically in the
direction given him by motives which had ceased for him. In the midst
of his divergence with Bessie Lynde he had still kept an inner fealty t