as the merest flattery to gain an end or the
generous conviction of her heart. She did not know. The most noble
truths that we utter often seem to us doubtfully true.

Now Sophia felt that what Eliza had said was only the fact--that it was
very sad that Mr. Bates should go ill and alone to his lonely home, but
that it could not be helped. To whatever degree of repentance and new
resolution Eliza might be brought, Sophia saw no way whatever of
materially helping Bates; but she urged the girl to go and visit him,
and say such kind and penitent things as might be in her power to say,
before he set forth on his melancholy journey.

"No," said Eliza, "I won't go"; and this was all that could be obtained
from her.

The visit was at an end. Sophia felt that it had been futile, and she
did not overlook the rebuff to herself. With this personal affront
rankling, and indignation that Eliza should still feel so resentful
after all that had been urged on behalf of Bates, she made her way into
the street.

She was feeling that life was a weary thing when she chanced, near the
end of the village, to look back, and saw Alec Trenholme some way
behind, but coming in the same direction. Having her report to give, she
waited and brought him to her side.

Sophia told all that had just passed, speaking with a restful feeling of
confidence in him. She had never felt just this confidence in a man
before; it sprang up from somewhere, she knew not where; probably from
the union of her sense of failure and his strength. She even told him
the analogy she had drawn between Eliza's conduct and the mistake of her
own life, alluding only to what all her little public knew of her deeds;
but it seemed to him that she was telling what was sacred to her
self-knowledge. He glanced at her often, and drank in all the pleasure
of her beauty. He even noticed the simplicity of the cotton gown and
leather belt, and the hat that was trimmed only with dried everlasting
flowers, such as grew in every field. As she talked his cane struck
sometimes a sharp passionate blow among plumes of golden-rod that grew
by their path, and snapped many a one.

The roadside grass was ragged. The wild plum shrubs by the fences were
bronzed by September. In the fields the stubble was yellow and brown.
The scattered white houses were all agleam in the clear, cool sunshine.

As he listened, Alec Trenholme's feeling was not now wrought upon at all
by what he was hearing of the