en but eight instead of eighteen.

Stephen forgot himself, forgot the fact that Mercy was comparatively a
stranger, forgot every thing, except the one intense consciousness of this
sweet woman-face looking up into his. Bending towards her, he said
suddenly,--

"Mrs. Philbrick, your face is the very loveliest face I have ever seen in
my life. Do not be angry with me. Oh, do not!" he continued, seeing the
color deepen in Mercy's cheeks, and a stern expression gathering in her
eyes, as she looked steadily at him with unutterable surprise. "Do not be
angry with me. I could not help saying it; but I do not say it as men
generally say such things. I am not like other men: I have lived alone
all my life with my mother. You need not mind my saying your face is
lovely, any more than my saying that the ferns on the walls are lovely."

If Stephen had known Mercy from her childhood, he could not have framed
his words more wisely. Every fibre of her artistic nature recognized the
possibility of a subtle truth in what he said, and his calm, dreamy tone
and look heightened this impression. Moreover, as Stephen's soul had been
during all the past four weeks slowly growing into the feeling which made
it inevitable that he should say these words on first looking closely and
intimately into Mercy's face, so had her soul been slowly growing into the
feeling which made it seem not really foreign or unnatural to her that he
should say them.

She answered him with hesitating syllables, quite unlike her usual fluent
speech.

"I think you must mean what you say, Mr. White; and you do not say it as
other men have said it. But will you please to remember not to say it
again? We cannot be friends, if you do."

"Never again, Mrs. Philbrick?" he said,--he could almost have said
"Mercy,"--and looked at her with a gaze of whose intentness he was hardly
aware.

Mercy felt a strange terror of this man; a few minutes ago a stranger, now
already asking at her hands she hardly knew what, and compelling her in
spite of herself. But she replied very quietly, with a slight smile,--

"Never, Mr. White. Now talk of something else, please. Your mother seemed
very much pleased with the ferns I carried her to-day. Did she love the
woods, when she was well?"

"I do not know. I never heard her say," answered Stephen, absently, still
gazing into Mercy's face.

"But you would have known, surely, if she had cared for them," said Mercy,
laughing; for she per