But Clement Lindsay was gone, and she must content herself with such
worshippers as the village afforded. Murray Bradshaw was surprised and
confounded at the easy way in which she received his compliments, and
played with his advances, after the fashion of the trained ball-room
belles, who know how to be almost caressing in manner, and yet are
really as far off from the deluded victim of their suavities as the
topmost statue of the Milan cathedral from the peasant that kneels on
its floor. He admired her all the more for this, and yet he saw that she
would be a harder prize to win than he had once thought. If he made up
his mind that he would have her, he must go armed with all implements,
from the red hackle to the harpoon.

The change which surprised Murray Bradshaw could not fail to be noticed
by all those about her. Miss Silence had long ago come to
pantomime,--rolling up of eyes, clasping of hands, making of sad
mouths, and the rest,--but left her to her own way, as already the
property of that great firm of World & Co. which drives such sharp
bargains for young souls with the better angels. Cynthia studied her for
her own purposes, but had never gained her confidence. The Irish servant
saw that some change had come over her, and thought of the great ladies
she had sometimes looked upon in the old country. They all had a kind of
superstitious feeling about Myrtle's bracelet, of which she had told
them the story, but which Kitty half believed was put in the drawer by
the fairies, who brought her ribbons and partridge-feathers, and other
simple adornments with which she contrived to set off her simple
costume, so as to produce those effects which an eye for color and
cunning fingers can bring out of almost nothing.

Gifted Hopkins was now in a sad, vacillating condition, between the two
great attractions to which he was exposed. Myrtle looked so immensely
handsome one Sunday when he saw her going to church,--not to meeting,
for she would not go, except when she knew Father Pemberton was going to
be the preacher,--that the young poet was on the point of going down on
his knees to her, and telling her that his heart was hers and hers
alone. But he suddenly remembered that he had on his best pantaloons;
and the idea of carrying the marks of his devotion in the shape of two
dusty impressions on his most valued article of apparel turned the scale
against the demonstration. It happened the next morning, that Susan
Pos