and Master Byles Gridley entered the
parlor.

As he came into the room, she gathered the papers together and replaced
them in the trunk, which she locked, throwing an unfinished piece
of needle-work over it, putting the key in her pocket, and gathering
herself up for company. Something of all this Master Gridley saw through
his round spectacles, but seemed not to see, and took his seat like a
visitor making a call of politeness.

A visitor at such an hour, of the male sex, without special provocation,
without social pretext, was an event in the life of the desolate
spinster. Could it be--No, it could not--and yet--and yet! Miss Cynthia
threw back the rather common-looking but comfortable shawl which covered
her shoulders, and showed her quite presentable figure, arrayed with a
still lingering thought of that remote contingency which might yet offer
itself at some unexpected moment; she adjusted the carefully plaited
cap, which was not yet of the lasciate ogni speranza pattern, and as
she obeyed these instincts of her sex, she smiled a welcome to the
respectable, learned, and independent bachelor. Mr. Gridley had a frosty
but kindly age before him, with a score or so of years to run, which it
was after all not strange to fancy might be rendered more cheerful by
the companionship of a well-conserved and amiably disposed woman, if any
such should happen to fall in his way.

That smile came very near disconcerting the plot of Master Byles
Gridley. He had come on an inquisitor's errand, his heart secure, as he
thought, against all blandishments, his will steeled to break down all
resistance. He had come armed with an instrument of torture worse than
the thumb-screw, worse than the pulleys which attempt the miracle of
adding a cubit to the stature, worse than the brazier of live coals
brought close to the naked soles of the feet,--an instrument which,
instead of trifling with the nerves, would clutch all the nerve-centres
and the heart itself in its gripe, and hold them until it got its
answer, if the white lips had life enough left to shape one. And here
was this unfortunate maiden lady smiling at him, setting her limited
attractions in their best light, pleading with him in that natural
language which makes any contumacious bachelor feel as guilty as Cain
before any single woman. If Mr. Gridley had been alone, he would have
taken a good sniff at his own bottle of sal volatile; for his kind heart
sunk within him as he th