e and nursing, and perhaps it was as well, for it drove self into
the background of her mind, for a part of the time at least, and filled
with anxiety the empty days. Grace, living five miles away and loaded
down with family cares and duties of her own, could be of little
practical assistance.

The winter had been a hard one for Pocahontas, harder, perhaps, for the
gallant nature which forbade her to bewail herself. She suffered
deeply and dumbly through all the weary nights and days. Pride and
womanly reserve precluded all beating of the breast, and forced
principle and nature to the ceaseless fight. Right gallantly she bore
herself. The mortification, the anguish, the love, must be met, hand
to hand, eye to eye, foot to foot. She endeavored to keep cheerful--to
take the same interest in life as formerly, and in the main she
succeeded; but there would come times when the struggle would seem
greater than she could bear, and being a woman, with a woman's heart,
and a woman's nerves, she would be irritable and difficult. But these
moods were never of long duration, any more than the more desperate
ones, when she would lock herself in her chamber and cast herself on
the floor and lie there prone and quivering--heart and conscience
utterly at variance--heart crying out with mad insistence that the
struggle was in vain; for love was strengthened by repression; and
conscience sternly replying that it should not be; the struggle should
continue until the last vestige of love should be expunged from heart
and life. It was no wonder, as time went on, that the girl's cheek
paled and that a dumb pleading came into the pure gray eyes.

Sometimes the thought of Jim would come and place itself in contrast to
the thought of the other man, for, unconsciously to her, her old friend
was her standard in many things. Her recognition of the nobility of
Jim's love would force, in some sort, recognition of the selfishness of
Thorne's love. She put such thoughts from her fiercely, and girded at
Jim in her aching, unreasonable heart, because his love was grander and
truer than the love she craved. Once, when old Sholto--the great red
setter--came and laid his head lovingly upon her lap, she frowned and
pushed him roughly away, because he looked up at her with eyes whose
honest faithfulness reminded her of Jim.

And the mother watched her child silently; conscious, through the
divination of unselfish mother-love, that her daughter s