he peaceful simplicity of the
village, and it was likely to cloud her pleasure in Philip's visit. She
felt that Mrs. Mavick was taking him away from the sweet serenity of
their life, and that in everything she said or did there was an element
of unrest and excitement. She was careful, however, not to show any of
this apprehension to Philip; she showed it only by an increased
affectionate interest in him and his concerns, and in trying to make the
old home more dear to him. Mrs. Mavick was loud in her praise of Alice
to her cousin, and sought to win her confidence, but she was, after all,
a little shy of her, and probably would have characterized her to a city
friend as a sort of virgin in the Bible.

It so happened that day after day went by without giving Philip anything
more than passing glimpses of Evelyn, when she was driving with her
mother or her governess. Yet Rivervale never seemed so ravishingly
beautiful to all his senses. Surely it was possessed by a spirit of
romance and poetry, which he had never perceived before, and he wasted a
good deal of time in gazing on the river, on the gracious meadows, on the
graceful contours of the hills. When he was a lad, in the tree-top,
there had been something stimulating and almost heroic in the scene,
which awakened his ambition. Now it was the idyllic beauty that took
possession of him, transformed as it was by the presence of a woman,
that supreme interpreter of nature to a youth. And yet scarcely a
woman--rather a vision of a girl, impressible still to all the influences
of such a scene and to the most delicate suggestions of unfolding life.
Probably he did not analyze this feeling, but it was Evelyn he was
thinking of when he admired the landscape, breathed with exhilaration the
fresh air, and watched the white clouds sail along the blue vault; and he
knew that if she were suddenly to leave the valley all the light would go
out of it and the scene would be flat to his eyes and torturing to his
memory.

Mrs. Mavick he encountered continually in the village. He had taken many
little strolls with her to this or that pretty point of view, they had
exchanged reminiscences of foreign travel, and had dipped a little into
current popular books, so that they had come to be on easy, friendly
terms. Philip's courtesy and deference, and a certain wit and humor of
suggestion applied to ordinary things, put him more and more on a good
footing with her, so much so that she declared