, and if Jerome would only
come to see her, that would be enough to make her very happy. She
thought that after her return he would very probably come. She
reasoned, as she thought, astutely, that he would not be able to help
it, when he saw her after a long absence. Then she had much faith in
her father's being able to arrange this satisfactorily for her, as he
had arranged all other matters during her life.

"Now don't you fret, Pretty," he had said, when she bade him
good-bye, "father will see to it that you have everything you want."
And Lucina, all blushing with innocent confusion, had believed him.

In addition to all this she had in her trunks, strapped at the back
of the stage-coach, two fine, new silk gowns, and one muslin, and a
silk mantilla. Also she carried a large blue bandbox containing a new
plumed hat and veil, which cheered her not a little, being one of
those minor sweets which providentially solace the weak feminine soul
in its unequal combat with life's great bitternesses.

Lucina was away some three months, not returning until a few days
before Thanksgiving; then she brought her friend, Miss Rose Soley,
with her, and also a fine young gentleman, with long, curling, fair
locks, and a face as fair as her own.

While Lucina was gone, Jerome led a life easier in some respects,
harder in others. He had no longer the foe of daily temptation to
overcome, but instead was the steady grind of hunger. Jerome, in
those days, felt the pangs of that worst hunger in the world--the
hunger for the sight of one beloved. Some mornings when he awoke it
seemed to him that he should die of mere exhaustion and starvation of
spirit if he saw not Lucina before night. In those days he would
rather have walked over fiery plough-shares than visited any place
where he had seen Lucina, and where she now was not. He never went
near the wood, where they had sat together; he would not pass even,
if he could help it, the Squire's house or Miss Camilla's. His was
one of those minds for whom, when love has once come, place is only
that which holds, or is vacant of, the beloved. He was glad when the
white frost came and burned out the gardens and the woodlands with
arctic fires of death, for then the associations with old scenes were
in a measure lost.

One Sunday after the frost, when the ground was shining stiff with
it, as with silver mail, and all the trees thickened the distance as
with glittering furze, he went to his wood