met Jerome when riding
in the morning. She had suspected something, though she scarcely knew
what. Lucina's secrecy lately had deceived even her mother. She had
begun to think that the girl had not been as much in earnest in her
love affair as she had thought, and was drooping from some other
cause.

When Lucina revealed with innocent readiness that she had met Colonel
Lamson that morning and talked with him, and with no one else,
Abigail could make nothing of it.

However, Lucina from that day on improved. She took up her little
tasks; she seemed quite as formerly, only, possibly, somewhat older
and more staid.

The Squire thought that her recovery was due to a certain bitter
medicine which Doctor Prescott had given her, and often extolled it
to his wife. "It is singular that medicine should work like a flash
of lightning after she had been taking it for weeks with no effect,"
thought Abigail, but she said nothing.

One afternoon, not long after her talk with Colonel Lamson, Lucina
met Jerome face to face in the road, and stopped and held out her
hand to him. "How do you do?" she said, paling and blushing, and yet
with a sweet confidence which was new in her manner.

Jerome bowed low, but did not offer his hand. She held out hers
persistently.

"I can't shake hands," he said, "mine is stained with leather; it
smells of it, too."

"I am not afraid of leather," Lucina returned, gently.

"I am," Jerome said, with a defiance in which there was no
bitterness. Then, as Lucina still looked at him and held out her
hand, with an indescribable air of pretty, childish insistence and
womanly pleading, her blue eyes being sober almost to tears, he
motioned her to wait a moment, and swung over the fence and down the
road-side, which was just there precipitous, to the brook-bed. He got
down on his knees, plunged his hands into the water, like a golden
net-work in the afternoon light, washed his hands well, and returned
to Lucina. She laid her little hand in his, but she shook her head,
smiling. "I liked it better the other way," said she.

"I couldn't touch your hand with mine like that."

"You would give me more if you let me give you something sometimes,"
said Lucina, with a pretty, sphinx-like look at him as she drew her
hand away.

Jerome wondered what she had meant after they had separated. Acute as
he was, and of more masterly mind than she, he was at a loss, for she
had touched that fixed idea which sways us al