pride to her
aid, and succeeded in a measure. She stopped putting on a special
gown to please Jerome should he come; she stopped watching out for
him; she stopped healing her mind with hope in order that it might be
torn open afresh with disappointment, but the wound remained and
gaped to her consciousness, and Lucina was a tender thing. She held
her beautiful head high and forced her face to gentle smiles, but she
went thin and pale, and could not sleep of a night, and her mother
began to fret about her, and her father to lay down his knife and
fork and stare at her across the table when she could not eat.

Squire Eben at that time ransacked the woods for choice game, and
himself stood over old Hannah or his wife, broiling the delicate
birds that they be done to a turn, and was fit to weep when his
pretty Lucina could scarcely taste them. Often, too, he sent
surreptitously to Boston for dainties not obtainable at home--East
India fruits and jellies and such--to tempt his daughter's appetite,
and watched her with great frowns of anxious love when they were set
before her.

One afternoon, when Lucina had gone up to her chamber to lie down,
having left her dinner almost untasted, though there was a little fat
wild bird and guava jelly served on a china plate, and an orange and
figs to come after, the Squire beckoned his wife into the
sitting-room and shut the door.

"D'ye think she's going into a decline?" he whispered. His great
frame trembled all over when he asked the question, and his face was
yellow-white. Years ago a pretty young sister of his, whose namesake
Lucina was, had died of a decline, as they had termed it, and, ever
since, death of the young and fair had worn that guise to the fancy
of the Squire. He remembered just how his young sister had looked
when she was fading to her early tomb, and to-day he had seemed to
see her expression in his daughter's face.

Abigail laid her little hand on his arm. "Don't look so, Eben," she
said. "I don't think she is in a decline; she doesn't cough."

"What ails her, Abigail?"

Mrs. Merritt hesitated. "I don't know that much ails her, Eben," she
said, evasively. "Girls often get run down, then spring up again."

"Abigail, you don't think the child is fretting about--that boy
again?"

"She hasn't mentioned his name to me for weeks, Eben," replied
Abigail, and her statement carried reassurance, since the Squire
argued, with innocent masculine prejudice, that what