used Fanny's dresses that morning, and had faithfully put on
her own travelling-suit,--the suit which Rachel had made her, and which
had seemed so very well at Eriecreek that they had called Uncle Jack in
to admire it when it was tried on. Now she knew that it looked
countrified, and its unstylishness struck in upon her, and made her feel
countrified in soul. "Yes," she owned, as she met Mr. Arbuton's glance,
"I'm nothing but an awkward milkmaid beside that young lady." This was
unjust to herself; but truly it was never in her present figure that he
had intended to show her to his world, which he had been sincere enough
in contemning for her sake while away from it. Confronted with good
society in these ladies, its delegates, he doubtless felt, as never
before, the vastness of his self-sacrifice, the difficulty of his
enterprise, and it would not have been so strange if just then she
should have appeared to him through the hard cold vision of the best
people instead of that which love had illumined. She saw whatever
purpose toward herself was in his eyes, flicker and die out as they fell
from hers. Then she sat alone while they three walked up and down, up
and down, and the skirts of the ladies brushed her garments in passing.

"O, where can Dick and Fanny be?" she silently bemoaned herself, "and
why don't they come and save me from these dreadful people?"

She sat in a stony quiet while they talked on, she thought, forever.
Their voices sounded in her ears like voices heard in a dream, their
laughter had a nightmare cruelty. Yet she was resolved to be just to Mr.
Arbuton, she was determined not meanly to condemn him; she confessed to
herself, with a glimmer of her wonted humor, that her dress must be an
ordeal of peculiar anguish to him, and she half blamed herself for her
conscientiousness in wearing it. If she had conceived of any such chance
as this, she would perhaps, she thought, have worn Fanny's grenadine.

She glanced again at the group which was now receding from her. "Ah!"
the elder of the ladies said, again halting the others midway of the
piazza's length, "there's the carriage at last! But what is that stupid
animal stopping for? O, I suppose he didn't understand, and expects to
take us up at the bridge! Provoking! But it's no use; we may as well go
to him at once; it's plain he isn't coming to us. Mr. Arbuton, will you
see us on board?"

"Who--I? Yes, certainly," he answered absently, and for the second