face Deborah
Thayer with this rumor concerning her daughter.

Deborah had of late felt anxious about Rebecca, who did not seem like
herself. Her face was strangely changed; all the old meaning had gone
out of it, and given place to another, which her mother could not
interpret. Sometimes Rebecca looked like a stranger to her as she
moved about the house. She said to many that Rebecca was miserable,
and was incensed that she got so little sympathy in response. Once
when Rebecca fainted in meeting, and had to be carried out, she felt
in the midst of her alarm a certain triumph. "I guess folks will see
now that I ain't been fussin' over her for nothin'," she thought.
When Rebecca revived under a sprinkle of water, out in the vestibule,
she said impatiently to the other women bending their grave,
concerned faces over her, "She's been miserable for some time. I
ain't surprised at this at all myself."

Deborah watched over Rebecca with a fierce, pecking tenderness like a
bird. She brewed great bowls of domestic medicines from nuts and
herbs, and made her drink whether she would or not. She sent her to
bed early, and debarred her from the night air. She never had a
suspicion of the figure slipping softly as a shadow across the north
parlor and out the front door night after night.

She never exchanged a word with Rebecca about William Berry. She
tried to persuade herself that Rebecca no longer thought much about
him; she drove from her mind the fear lest Rebecca's illness might be
due to grief at parting from him. She looked at Thomas Payne with a
speculative eye; she thought that he would make a good husband for
Rebecca; she dreamed of him, and built bridal castles for him and her
daughter, as she knitted those yards of lace at night, when Rebecca
had gone to bed in her little room off the north parlor. When Thomas
Payne went west a month after Charlotte Barnard had refused him, she
transferred her dreams to some fine stranger who should come to the
village and at once be smitten with Rebecca. She never thought it
possible that Rebecca could be persisting in her engagement to
William Berry against her express command. Her own obstinacy was
incredible to her in her daughter; she had not the slightest
suspicion of it, and Rebecca had less to guard against.

As the fall advanced Rebecca showed less and less inclination to go
in the village society. Her mother fairly drove her out at times.
Once Rebecca, utterly overcome, s