ids with a gentle word. And if ever any serious instance did
occur, of neglect or real ill-will, one earnest look of those large
blind eyes would melt the coarsest nature.

Since she had understood that there was work for her to do--that the
moulding of their daily life was entirely in her hands, and that it was
her duty to be cheerful for her father's sake, she had much less time
to feel the pain of Clement's absence; and when he was sent to school
in town, she was able to bid him a more composed farewell than any of
the others. For some weeks, it is true, she went about the house as
though she were in a dream--as though she had been severed from her
happier self. But she soon grew gay again, jesting with her father to
win him to a laugh, and singing to herself her favourite songs. When
the vicar's wife would come with letters, and read the news and
messages from Clement, her heart would beat quick in secret; and that
night perhaps, she lay awake for a longer time than usual; but in the
morning she would rise serene as ever.

When Clement came home for the holidays, his first steps were to the
sexton's house--and his step Marlene knew,--ever so far off. She stood
still, and listened whether it was for her he asked; then with her slim
hands, she hastily smoothed back her hair, that still hung in its heavy
plaits upon her slender neck; then rose and left her work; and by the
time he had crossed the threshold, there was not a trace of agitation
on her features. Gaily she offered him her hand, and begged him to come
in and sit down beside her, and tell her what he had been doing. There
he would often forget the hours, and his mother would come after him,
for she began to grudge any of his time she lost. He very rarely stayed
all his holidays in the village; he would go rambling about the
mountains, absorbed by his growing love of nature and of its history.

And so the years rolled on, in monotonous rotation. The old were fading
gradually, and the young growing fast in bloom and strength.

Once when Clement came home at Easter, and saw Marlene, as, rising from
her spinning-wheel she came to meet him, he was struck with the
progress of her loveliness since autumn. "You are quite a grown-up
young lady now," he said; "and I too have done with boyhood--only feel
my beard, how it has grown over my winter studies." She blushed a
little as he took her hand, and passed it across his chin to make her
feel the down upon it. And he