hanged so, father," Lucina had said; "I did not
mean to be discourteous, and I will remember him another time."

Lucina had really considered afterwards, saying nothing to her father
or her mother, that the young man was very handsome. She had sat
quite still that Sunday afternoon in the meeting-house, and, instead
of listening to the sermon, had searched her memory for old pictures
of Jerome. She had recalled distinctly the tea-drinking in her aunt
Camilla's arbor, his refusal of cake, and gift of sassafras-root in
the meadow; also his repulse of her childish generosity when she
would have given him her little savings for the purchase of shoes.
Old stings of the spirit can often be revived with thought, even when
the cause is long passed. Lucina, sitting there in meeting, felt
again the pang of her slighted benevolence. She was sure that she
would remember Jerome at once the next time they met, but for a
minute she did not. She bowed and shook hands prettily with Elmira,
then turned to Jerome and stared at him, all unmindful of her
manners, thinking vaguely that here was some grand young gentleman
who had somehow gotten into her party unbidden. Such a fool do
externals make of the memory, which needs long training to know the
same bird in different feathers.

Lucina stared at Jerome, at first with grave and innocent wonder,
then suddenly her eyes drooped and a soft blush crept over her face
and neck, and even her arms. Lucina, in her short-sleeved India
muslin gown, flowing softly from its gathering around her white
shoulders to her slender waist, where a blue ribbon bound it, and
thence in lines of transparent lights and blue shadows to her little
pointed satin toe, stood before him with a sort of dumb-maiden
appealing that he should not look at her so, but he was helpless, as
with a grasp of vision which he could not loosen.

Jerome looked at her as the first man might have looked at the first
woman; the world was empty but for him and her. The voices of the
company were ages distant, their eyes dim across eternal spaces. The
fragrance of sweet lavender and dried rose-leaves from Lucina's
garments, and, moreover, a strange Oriental one, that seemed to
accent the whole, from her sandal-wood fan, was to him, as by a
transposing into a different key of sense, like some old melody of
life which he had always known, and yet so forgotten that it had
become new.

Jerome never knew how long he stood there, but suddenly