pon his mother, whom she much esteemed for her
strong and decisive traits of character, soft and womanly though
she was. Cares and anxieties had kept her from association with her
neighbors, among whom, as she knew, she seldom appeared, except on
occasions of sickness or suffering, or when some event seemed
to demand the presence of a deciding woman's mind and will. She
remembered one or two such times in their earlier forest life, when
Mrs. Ridgeley had quietly assumed her natural place for a day, to
go back to her round of widowed love, care and toil. She would make
occasion to see her, and perhaps find some indirect way to be useful
to both mother and son.

CHAPTER VI.

WHAT HE THOUGHT OF THINGS.

How grateful to the sensitive heart of the young man would have been
the knowledge that he was an object of thoughtful interest to Julia's
mother, who, next to his own, had his reverence and regard! He knew he
was generally disliked; his intuitions assured him of this, and in his
young arrogance he had not cared. Indeed, he had come to feel a morbid
pleasure in avoiding and being avoided; but now, as he sat in the
little silent room in the late night, he felt his isolation. He
had been appalled at a discovery--or rather a revelation--made that
afternoon. He knew that he loved Julia, and that this love would be
the one passion of manhood, as it had been of his boyhood. He had
given himself up to it as to a delicious onflowing stream, drifting
him through enchanted lands, and had not thought or cared whither it
might bear, or on what desolate shore it might finally strand him.

Now he felt its full strength and power, and he knew, too, that it was
a force to be controlled, when perhaps that had become impossible. He
had never asked himself if a return of his passion were even possible,
until now, when his whole fervid nature had gone out in a great hungry
longing for her love and sympathy. She had never stood so lovely and
so inaccessible as he had seen her that day. How deeply through and
through came the first greeting of her eyes! It was an electric flash
never received before, and which as suddenly disappeared. How cool and
indifferent was her manner and look as he approached, and stood near
her! No inquiry, save that mocking one! Not a word; not a thought of
where he had been, or why he had returned, or what he would do; the
shortest answer as to his inquiry about her mother; no intimation that
he might even