have thought "good enough for them," and "too good for" so
unappreciative a person.

With the first bright and warm weather, Willie went to spend a week with
his friend, and Mrs. Smiley felt forced to take a vacation. A
yachting-party were going over to the cape, and Captain Rumway was to
take them out over the bar. Rumway himself sent an invitation to Mrs.
Smiley--this being the first offer of amity he had felt able to make
since the previous July. She laughed a little, to herself, when the note
came (for she was not ignorant of the town-tattle--what school-teacher
ever is?) and sent an acceptance. If Captain Rumway were half as
courageous as she, the chatterers would be confounded, she promised
herself, as she made her toilet for the occasion--not too nice for
sea-water, but bright and pretty, and becoming, as her toilets always
were.

So she sailed over to the cape with the "young folks," and, as widows
can--particularly widows who have gossip to avenge--was more charming
than any girl of them all, to others beside Captain Rumway. The officers
of the garrison vied with each other in showing her attentions; and the
light-house keeper, in exhibiting the wonders and beauties of the place,
always, if unconsciously, appealed to Mrs. Smiley for admiration and
appreciation. Yet she wore her honors modestly, contriving to share this
homage with some other, and never accepting it as all meant for herself.
And toward Captain Rumway her manner was as absolutely free from either
coquetry or awkwardness as that of the most indifferent acquaintance.
Nobody, seeing her perfectly frank yet quiet and cool deportment with
her former suitor, could say, without falsehood, that she in any way
concerned herself about him; and if he had heard that she was pining for
him, he was probably undeceived during that excursion. Thus she came
home feeling that she had vindicated herself, and with a pretty color in
her face that made her look as girlish as any young lady of them all.

But, if Captain Rumway had reopened an acquaintance with Mrs. Smiley out
of compassion for any woes she might be suffering on his account, or out
of a design to show how completely he was master of himself, or, in
short, for any motive whatever, he was taken in his own devices, and
compelled to surrender unconditionally. Like the man in Scripture, out
of whom the devils were cast only to return, his last estate was worse
than the first, as he was soon compelled to a