he had talked with her
half an hour. The other reason, which, if Dr. Eben had only known it,
would have more than comforted him for all he felt he had lost on the
surface, was that Hetty, in the bottom of her heart, was slowly growing
conscious that she cared a great deal about him.

No woman, whatever she may say and honestly mean, can entirely dismiss
from her thoughts the memory of the words in which a man has told her he
loves her. Especially is this true when those words are the first words
of love which have ever been spoken to her. Morning and night, as Hetty
came and went, in her brisk cheery way, in and out of the house and
about the farm, she wore a new look on her face. The words, "I love you
with all my heart," haunted her. She did not believe them any more now
than before; but they had a very sweet sound. She was no nearer now than
then to any impulse to take Dr. Williams at his word: nothing could be
deeper implanted in a soul than the conviction was in Hetty's that
no man was likely to love her. But she was no longer so sure that she
herself could not love. Vague and wistful reveries began to interrupt
her activity. She would stand sometimes, with her arms folded, leaning
on a stile, and idly watching her men at work, till they wondered what
had happened to their mistress. She lost a little of the color from her
cheeks, and the full moulded lines of her chin grew sharper.

"Faith, an' Miss Hetty's goin' off, sooner 'n she's any right to,"
said Mike to Norah one day. "What puts such a notion in your head thin,
Mike?" retorted Norah, "sure she's as foine a crayther as's in all the
county, an' foiner too."

"Foine enough, but I say for all that that she's a goin' off in her
looks mighty fast," replied the keen-eyed Mike. "You don't think she'd
be a pinin' for anybody, do you?"

Norah gave a hearty Irish laugh.

"Miss Hetty a pinin'!" she repeated over and over with bursts of
merriment:

"Ah, but yez are all alike, ye men. Miss Hetty a pinin'! I'd like to see
the man Miss Hetty wud pine fur."

Mike and Norah were both right. There was no "pining" in Hetty's busy
and sensible soul; but there had been planted in it a germ of new
life, whose slow quickening and growth were perplexing and disturbing
elements: not as yet did she recognize them; she only felt the
disturbance, and its link with Dr. Eben was sufficiently clear to make
her manner to him undergo an indefinable change. It was no less cordial,