e pure love--almost worship--she had put aside as a thing
of light importance; and I think the interview helped him in the work
upon which he had entered, that of obliterating from his heart all
traces of her image.

After this interview, they did not draw together again during the
evening. Delia tried to be gay and indifferent; but he acted himself out
just as he was. I did not observe that he was more social than usual,
or that he mingled more than was his wont with the young ladies present.
For most of the time, he kept, as was usual with him, in company and in
conversation with his own sex.

I could not but pity Delia Floyd. It was plain to me that she was waking
up to the sad error she had committed--an error, the consequences of
which would go with her through life. Very, very far was she from being
indifferent to Wallingford--that I could plainly see.

During the winter, Ralph came up frequently from New York to visit his
bride to be. As he was the nephew of Judge Bigelow, he and Wallingford
were, as a thing of course, thrown often together during these visits.
It can hardly excite wonder, that Wallingford maintained a reserved
and distant demeanor towards the young man, steadily repelling all
familiarity, yet always treating him with such politeness and respect
that no cause of offence could appear. On the part of Dewey, it may be
said that he saw little in the grave plodder among dusty law books and
discolored parchments, that won upon his regard. He looked upon him as
a young man good enough in his way--a very small way, in his
estimation--good enough for S----, and small enough for a country town
lawyer. He would have put on towards him a patronizing air, and tried to
excite in his mind a nobler ambition than to move in our circumscribed
sphere, if something in the young man's steady, penetrating,
half-mysterious eye had not always held him back:

"I never can talk with that young associate or yours, uncle," he would
say, now and then, to Judge Bigelow, "and I can't just make him out. Is
he stupid, or queer?"

The Judge would smile, or laugh quietly to himself, or perhaps answer in
this wise:

"I think Henry understands himself. Still waters, you know, run deep."

One day in February, on the occasion of a periodical visit to S----,
young Dewey called in at Judge Bigelow's office, and finding Wallingford
alone, sat down and entered into as familiar a talk with him as was
possible, considering how littl