would naturally suggest.

"Who is this Clement Lindsay, Bathsheba?" Myrtle asked.

Why, Myrtle, don't you remember about Susan Posey's is-to-be,--the young
man that has been well, I don't know, but I suppose engaged to her ever
since they were children almost?"

"Yes, yes, I remember now. Oh dear! I have forgotten so many things, I
should think I had been dead and was coming back to life again. Do you
know anything about him, Bathsheba? Did n't somebody say he was very
handsome? I wonder if he is really in love with Susan Posey. Such a
simple thing? I want to see him. I have seen so few young men."

As Myrtle said these words, she lifted the sleeve a little on her left
arm, by a half-instinctive and half-voluntary movement. The glimmering
gold of Judith Pride's bracelet flashed out the yellow gleam which has
been the reddening of so many hands and the blackening of so, many souls
since that innocent sin-breeder was first picked up in the land of
Havilah. There came a sudden light into her eye, such as Bathsheba had
never seen there before. It looked to her as if Myrtle were saying
unconsciously to herself that she had the power of beauty, and would like
to try its influence on the handsome young man whom she was soon to meet,
even at the risk of unseating poor little Susan in his affections. This
pained the gentle and humble-minded girl, who, without having tasted the
world's pleasures, had meekly consecrated herself to the lowly duties
which lay nearest to her. For Bathsheba's phrasing of life was in the
monosyllables of a rigid faith. Her conceptions of the human soul were
all simplicity and purity, but elementary. She could not conceive the
vast license the creative energy allows itself in mingling the instincts
which, after long conflict, may come into harmonious adjustment. The
flash which Myrtle's eye had caught from the gleam of the golden bracelet
filled Bathsheba with a sudden fear that she was like to be led away by
the vanities of that world lying in wickedness of which the minister's
daughter had heard so much and seen so little.

Not that Bathsheba made any fine moral speeches, to herself. She only
felt a slight shock, such as a word or a look from one we love too often
gives us,--such as a child's trivial gesture or movement makes a parent
feel,--that impalpable something which in the slightest possible
inflection of a syllable or gradation of a tone will sometimes leave a
sting behind