was in town. Her mother had given up her
Boston house, and they lived the whole year round at Gormanville, where
the air was good for Mrs. Bentley without her apparently being the
better for it; again, we heard in a roundabout way that their
circumstances were not so fortunate as they had been, and that they had
given up their Boston house partly from motives of economy.

There was no reason why our intimacy with the lovers' affairs should
continue, and it did not. Miss Bentley made mention of Glendenning, when
my wife saw her, with what Mrs. March decided to be an abiding fealty,
but without offer of confidence; and Glendenning, when we happened to
meet at rare intervals, did not invite me to more than formal inquiry
concerning the well-being of Mrs. Bentley and her daughter.

He was undoubtedly getting older, and he looked it. He was one of those
gentle natures which put on fat, not from self-indulgence, but from want
of resisting force, and the clerical waistcoat that buttoned black to
his throat swayed decidedly beyond a straight line at his waist. His
red-gold hair was getting thin, and though he wore it cut close all
round, it showed thinner on the crown than on the temples, and his pale
eyebrows were waning. He had a settled patience of look which would have
been a sadness, if there had not been mixed with it an air of resolute
cheerfulness. I am not sure that this kept it from being sad, either.

Miss Bentley, on her part, was no longer the young girl she was when we
met on the _Corinthian_. She must then have been about twenty, and she
was now twenty-six, but she looked thirty. Dark people show their age
early, and she showed hers in cheeks that grew thinner if not paler, and
in a purple shadow under her fine eyes. The parting of her black hair
was wider than it once was, and she wore it smooth in apparent disdain
of those arts of fluffing and fringing which give an air of vivacity, if
not of youth. I should say she had always been a serious girl, and now
she showed the effect of a life that could not have been gay for any
one.

The lovers promised themselves, as we knew, that Mrs. Bentley would
relent, and abandon what was more like a whimsical caprice than a
settled wish. But as time wore on, and she gave no sign of changing, I
have wondered whether some change did not come upon them, which affected
them towards each other without affecting their constancy. I fancied
their youthful passion taking on the sa