t-shine you in conversation,
and I know that she is playing a deep game."

"La, ma!" the girl exclaimed. "An old maid, without the least style! and
she makes butter too, and actually climbs up in a chair to scrub down
her closets,--for Edward and I caught her at it one day."

"And did she seem confused?" asked Mrs. Winslow.

"No, indeed! Now I should have died, if he had caught me in such a
plight; but she shook down her dress as though it were a matter of
course, and they were soon talking about some German stuff,--I don't
know what it was,--while I had to amuse myself with the drawings."

"That's the way!" retorted the mother. "You play dummy for them. I wish
you had a little more spirit, Lucy. You wouldn't play into the hands of
this designing"----

"Nonsense, mamma! She's a real clever, good-natured old thing, and I
like her," exclaimed the daughter. "You're so suspicious!"

"You're so foolishly secure!" answered mamma. "A man is never certain
until after the ceremony; and you don't know Edward Ames, Lucy."

"I know he's got plenty of money, mother, and I know he's real nice and
handsome," was the reply; and they walked out of hearing.

I wouldn't have listened even to so much as that, if I could have
avoided it; and as soon as I could, I went into the parlor, and sat down
to some work, trying to keep down that old trouble, which somehow
gathered size like a rolling snowball. I might have known what it was,
if I had not closed my eyes resolutely, and said to myself, "The summer
will soon be gone, and there will be an end of it all then"; and I
winced, as I said it, like one who sees a blow coming.

The summer went by imperceptibly; it was autumn, and still all things
remained outwardly as they had been. We went back and forth continually,
rode and walked out, sang and read together, and Lucy grew fonder and
fonder of me. She could scarcely live out of my presence, and confided
to me all her plans when she and Edward should be married,--how much she
thought of him, and he of her, all about their courtship, how he
declared himself and how she accepted him one soft moonlight night in
far Italy, how agitated and distressed he had been when she had a fever,
and a thousand other details which swelled that great stone in my heart
more and more. But I shut my eyes, until one day when I saw them
together. He was listening, intent, and very pale, to something she told
him, and, to my surprise, she was pale too, and w