as she could, and glided down the
road towards her own house swiftly, although her knees trembled.
Sylvia's knees always trembled when she came out of church, after she
had sat an hour and a half opposite Richard Alger. To-day they felt
weaker than ever, after her encounter with Hannah. Nobody knew the
terror Sylvia had of her sister's discovering how she had called in
Barnabas Thayer, and in a manner unveiled her maiden heart to him.
When Charlotte had come in that night after Barnabas had gone, and
discovered her crying on the sofa, she had jumped up and confronted
her with a fierce instinct of concealment.

"There ain't nothin' new the matter," she said, in response to
Charlotte's question; "I was thinkin' about mother; I'm apt to when
it comes dusk." It was the first deliberate lie that Sylvia Crane had
ever told in her life. She reflected upon it after Charlotte had
gone, and reflected also with fierce hardihood that she would lie
again were it necessary. Should she hesitate at a lie if it would
cover the maiden reserve that she had cherished so long?

However, Charlotte had suspected more than her aunt knew of the true
cause of her agitation. A similar motive for grief made her acute.
Sylvia, mourning alone of a Sabbath night upon her hair-cloth sofa,
struck an old chord of her own heart. Charlotte dared not say a
word to comfort her directly. She condoled with her for the
fifteen-years-old loss of her mother, and did not allude to Richard
Alger; but going home she said to herself, with a miserable qualm of
pity, that poor Aunt Sylvia was breaking her heart because Richard
had stopped coming.

"It's harder for Aunt Sylvia because she's older," thought Charlotte,
on her way home that night. But then she thought also, with a sorer
qualm of self-pity, that Sylvia had not quite so long a life before
her, to live alone. Charlotte had nearly reached her own home that
night when two figures suddenly slunk across the road before her. She
at once recognized Rebecca Thayer as one of them, and called out
"Good-evening, Rebecca!" to her.

Rebecca made only a muttered sound in response, and they both
disappeared in the darkness. There was a look of secrecy and flight
about it which somehow startled Charlotte, engrossed as she was with
her own troubles and her late encounter with Rose.

When she got into the house she spoke of it to her mother. Cephas had
gone to bed, and Sarah was sitting up waiting for her.

"I met R