t
folds, and were never seen to clasp anything; her softly clustering
fair curls hung over her thin blooming cheeks, and her face could
scarce be seen, unless, as she seldom did, she turned and looked full
upon one. Then her dark blue eyes, with a little nervous frown
between them, shone out radiantly; her thin lips showed a warm red,
and her beauty startled one.

Everybody wondered why she did not have a lover, why some fine young
man had not been smitten by her while she had been away at school.
They did not know that the school had been situated in another little
village, the counterpart of the one in which she had been born,
wherein a fitting mate for a bird of her feather could hardly be
found. The simple young men of the country-side were at once
attracted and intimidated by her. They cast fond sly glances across
the meeting-house at her lovely face, but they were confused before
her when they jostled her in the doorway and the rose and lavender
scent of her lady garments came in their faces. Not one of them dared
accost her, much less march boldly upon the great Corinthian-pillared
house, raise the brass knocker, and declare himself a suitor for the
Squire's daughter.

One young man there was, indeed, who treasured in his heart an
experience so subtle and so slight that he could scarcely believe in
it himself. He never recounted it to mortal soul, but kept it as a
secret sacred between himself and his own nature, but something to be
scoffed at and set aside by others.

It had happened one Sabbath day in summer, when Evelina had not been
many years home from school, as she sat in the meeting-house in her
Sabbath array of rose-colored satin gown, and white bonnet trimmed
with a long white feather and a little wreath of feathery green, that
of a sudden she raised her head and turned her face, and her blue
eyes met this young man's full upon hers, with all his heart in them,
and it was for a second as if her own heart leaped to the surface,
and he saw it, although afterwards he scarce believed it to be true.

Then a pallor crept over Evelina's delicately brilliant face. She
turned it away, and her curls falling softly from under the green
wreath on her bonnet brim hid it. The young man's cheeks were a hot
red, and his heart beat loudly in his ears when he met her in the
doorway after the sermon was done. His eager, timorous eyes sought
her face, but she never looked his way. She laid her slim hand in its
cream-