out quick," she said, in a sharp whisper, and Jerome was
glad enough to go.

Lucina's guests spent Thanksgiving with her. Jerome saw them twice,
riding horseback with Lawrence Prescott--Lucina on her little white
horse, Miss Soley on Lawrence's black, the strange young man on the
Squire's sorrel, and Lawrence on a gray.

Lucina colored when she saw Jerome, and reined her horse, lingering
behind the others, but he did not seem to notice it, and never looked
at her after his first grave bow; then she touched her horse, and
galloped after her friends with a windy swirl of blue veil and
skirts.

Jerome wondered if his sister would hear that Lawrence Prescott had
been out riding with Lucina and her friends. When he got home that
night, he met Belinda Lamb coming out of the gate; when he entered,
he saw by Elmira's face that she had heard. She was binding shoes
very fast; her little face was white, except for red spots on the
cheeks, her mouth shut hard. Her mother kept looking at her
anxiously.

"You'd better not worry till you know you've got something to worry
about; likely as not, they asked him to go with them 'cause Lucina's
beau don't know how to ride very well, and he couldn't help it," she
said, with a curious aside of speech, as if Jerome, though on the
stage, was not to hear.

He took no notice, but that night he had a word with his sister after
their mother had gone to bed. "If he has asked you to marry him, you
ought to trust him," said he. "I don't believe his going to ride with
that girl means anything. You ought to believe in him until you know
he isn't worthy of it."

Elmira turned upon him with a flash of eyes like his own. "Worthy!"
she cried--"don't I think he would be worthy if he did leave me for
her! Do you think I would blame him if he did leave anybody as poor
as I am, worked 'most to skin and bone, of body and soul too, for
anybody like that girl? I guess I wouldn't blame him, and you
needn't. I don't blame him; it's true, I know, he'll never come to
see me again, but I don't blame him."

"If he doesn't come to see you again he'll have me to hear from,"
Jerome said, fiercely.

"No, he won't. Don't you ever dare speak to him, or blame him, Jerome
Edwards; I won't have it." Elmira ran into her chamber, leaving an
echo of wild sobs in her brother's ears.

The day after Thanksgiving, Lucina's friends went away; when Jerome
came home that night Elmira's face wore a different expression, whic