ce. "Oh,
there was kindness enough, once you had caught his fancy! I wonder if the
lady at Westover praised his kindness? They say she is a proud young lady:
I wonder if she liked your being at the ball last night? When she comes
to Fair View, I'll take my oath that you'll walk no more in its garden!
But perhaps she won't come now,--though her maid Chloe told Mistress
Bray's Martha that she certainly loves him"--

"I wish I were dead," said Audrey. "I wish I were dead, like Molly." She
stood up straight against the wall, and pushed her heavy hair from her
forehead. "Be quiet now," she said. "You see that I am awake; there is no
need for further calling. I shall not dream again." She looked at the
older woman doubtfully. "Would you mind," she suggested,--"would you be so
very kind as to leave me alone, to sit here awake for a while? I have to
get used to it, you know. To-morrow, when we go back to the glebe house, I
will work the harder. It must be easy to work when one is awake. Dreaming
takes so much time."

Mistress Deborah could hardly have told why she did as she was asked.
Perhaps the very strangeness of the girl made her uncomfortable in her
presence; perhaps in her sour and withered heart there was yet some little
soundness of pity and comprehension; or perhaps it was only that she had
said her say, and was anxious to get to her friends below, and shake from
her soul the dust of any possible complicity with circumstance in moulding
the destinies of Darden's Audrey. Be that as it may, when she had flung
her hood upon the bed and had looked at herself in the cracked glass above
the dresser, she went out of the room, and closed the door somewhat softly
behind her.

CHAPTER XXII

BY THE RIVERSIDE

"Yea, I am glad--I and my father and mother and Ephraim--that thee is
returned to Fair View," answered Truelove. "And has thee truly no shoes of
plain and sober stuffs? These be much too gaudy."

"There's a pair of black callimanco," said the storekeeper reluctantly;
"but these of flowered silk would so become your feet, or this red-heeled
pair with the buckles, or this of fine morocco. Did you think of me every
day that I spent in Williamsburgh?"

"I prayed for thee every day," said Truelove simply,--"for thee and for
the sick man who had called thee to his side. Let me see thy callimanco
shoes. Thee knows that I may not wear these others."

The storekeeper brought the plainest footgear that his stock affo