gleam which has
been the reddening of so many hands and the blackening of so many souls
since that innocent sin-breeder was first picked up in the land of
Havilah. There came a sudden light into her eye, such as Bathsheba had
never seen there before. It looked to her as if Myrtle were saying
unconsciously to herself that she had the power of beauty, and would
like to try its influence on the handsome young man whom she was soon to
meet, even at the risk of unseating poor little Susan in his affections.
This pained the gentle and humble-minded girl, who, without having
tasted the world's pleasures, had meekly consecrated herself to the
lowly duties which lay nearest to her. For Bathsheba's phrasing of life
was in the monosyllables of a rigid faith. Her conceptions of the human
soul were all simplicity and purity, but elementary. She could not
conceive the vast license the creative energy allows itself in mingling
the instincts which, after long conflict, may come into harmonious
adjustment. The flash which Myrtle's eye had caught from the gleam of
the golden bracelet filled Bathsheba with a sudden fear that she was
like to be led away by the vanities of that world lying in wickedness of
which the minister's daughter had heard so much and seen so little.

Not that Bathsheba made any fine moral speeches to herself. She only
felt a slight shock, such as a word or a look from one we love too often
gives us,--such as a child's trivial gesture or movement makes a parent
feel,--that impalpable something which in the slightest possible
inflection of a syllable or gradation of a tone will sometimes leave a
sting behind it, even in a trusting heart. This was all. But it was
true that what she saw meant a great deal. It meant the dawning in
Myrtle Hazard of one of her as yet unlived _secondary lives_.
Bathsheba's virgin perceptions had caught a faint early ray of its
glimmering twilight.

She answered, after a very slight pause, which this explanation has made
seem so long, that she had never seen the young gentleman, and that she
did not know about Susan's sentiments. Only, as they had kept so long to
each other, she supposed there must be love between them.

Myrtle fell into a revery, with certain _tableaux_ glowing along its
perspectives which poor little Susan Posey would have shivered to look
upon, if they could have been transferred from the purple clouds of
Myrtle's imagination to the pale silvery mists of Susan's pretty