grily. "There is no question of slight. Do
you think I was in love with George Ramsey?"

"No, I don't, for if you had been you would have had him instead of
letting a little dolly-pinky, rosy-like Lily Merrill get him. I think
he was a good match, and I don't know what possessed you, but I don't
think you wanted him."

"If you talk about it you will make people think so," said Maria,
passionately; "and if they do I will go away from Amity and never
come back as long as I live."

Aunt Maria looked with sharp, gleaming eyes at her niece. "Maria
Edgham, you've got something on your mind," said she.

"I have not."

"Yes, you have, and I want to know what it is."

"My mind is my own," said Maria, indignantly, even cruelly. Then she
rose from the table and ran up-stairs to her own room.

"You have gone off without touching the lemon-cake," her aunt called
after her, but Maria made no response.

Lemon-cake was an outpost which she could not then take. She had
reached her limit, for the time being. She sat down beside her window
in the dark room, lighted only by the gleam from the Merrill house
across the yard and an electric light on the street corner. There
were curious lights and shadows over the walls; strange flickerings
and wavings as of intangible creatures, unspoken thoughts. Maria
rested her elbows on the window-sill, and rested her chin in her
hands, and gazed out. Presently, with a quiver of despair, she saw
the door of the Merrill house open and Lily come flitting across the
yard. She thought, with a shudder, that she was coming to make a few
more confidences before George Ramsey arrived. She heard a timid
little knock on the side door, then her aunt's harsh and
uncompromising, "No, Maria ain't at home," said she, lying with the
utter unrestraint of one who believes in fire and brimstone, and yet
lies. She even repeated it, and emphasized and particularized her
lie, seemingly with a grim enjoyment of sin, now that she had taken
hold of it.

"Maria went out right after supper," said she. Then, evidently in
response to Lily's low inquiry of where she had gone and when she
would be home, she said: "She went to the post-office. She was
expecting a letter from a gentleman in Edgham, I guess, and I
shouldn't wonder if she stopped in at the Monroes' and played cards.
They've been teasing her to. I shouldn't be surprised if she wasn't
home till ten o'clock."

Maria heard her aunt with wonder which savored of h