es. Now all at once there
seemed a little lassitude upon her: she left all questions concerning
the housekeeping for her domestic, Ann, to decide; she would drop her
sewing in her lap and fall into reverie, her cheeks crimsoning, her eyes
growing dark and misty, and emerge into reality presently with a
beautiful trembling smile on her lips. I grudged her those reveries and
those smiles: I quaked at the thought that her heart was turning toward
Mr. Floyd, much as I loved and venerated him. I knew that she had
worshipped my father, and I wanted her to carry that one feeling supreme
to the end of her days. _Cet age est sans pitie_. I realized nothing of
the preciousness of those impulses which were quickening her again into
happy youth: I realized nothing of her having been lonely--nothing of
the pain and passion of longing which must have tried her through these
eight years of widowhood, without any companionship save mine, with such
cruel silence when she had been used to every tenderness, to constant
loving flatteries, to gentlest ministrations--or I hope I should not so
bitterly have resented this new hope of hers which made her almost
afraid to look me in the face.

When Mr. Floyd did not come he wrote frequently to my mother. I used to
bring his letters to her with a swelling heart and bitter tears in my
eyes; but she knew nothing of those tears, for she never looked up, nor
when she took the letters did she read them before me. He wrote
frequently to me as well as to her, but while her envelopes covered
numerous well-filled pages, his notes to me were adorned with just one
degree more ample verbiage than we use in a telegram.

But nothing was said between us until one night early in September. It
was a rainy evening, but so warm that both doors and windows stood wide
open, and we heard the faint pattering music of the swift succeeding
showers mingled with the monotonous chant of the katydids. My mother sat
at the table with a pretence of work in her hands, but I saw that she
trembled so much that she could not draw the thread. I had brought her
in a letter at seven o'clock directed in Mr. Floyd's fine cramped
handwriting, and I too had a note from him. My mother had taken hers
from me with a devouring blush, and as if to hide it had thrust it
beneath a pile of cambric ruffles on the table.

Her look and manner had made me turn almost sick with pain, for it
seemed to me she no longer loved or trusted me. I had lost