wore her hair in curls, although they were tied
back from her face with a black velvet ribbon, and did not veil it
when she drooped her head, as Evelina's used to do.
The people divided their attention between her and the new minister.
Their curiosity goaded them in equal measure with their spiritual
zeal. "I can't wait to find out who that girl is," one woman
whispered to another.
The girl herself had no thought of the commotion which she awakened.
When the service was over, and she walked with a gentle maiden
stateliness, which seemed a very copy of Evelina's own, out of the
meeting-house, down the street to the Squire's house, and entered it,
passing under the stately Corinthian pillars, with a last purple
gleam of her satin skirts, she never dreamed of the eager attention
that followed her.
It was several days before the village people discovered who she was.
The information had to be obtained, by a process like mental
thumb-screwing, from the old man who tended Evelina's garden, but at
last they knew. She was the daughter of a cousin of Evelina's on the
father's side. Her name was Evelina Leonard; she had been named for
her father's cousin. She had been finely brought up, and had attended
a Boston school for young ladies. Her mother had been dead many
years, and her father had died some two years ago, leaving her with
only a very little money, which was now all gone, and Evelina Adams
had invited her to live with her. Evelina Adams had herself told the
old gardener, seeing his scant curiosity was somewhat awakened by the
sight of the strange young lady in the garden, but he seemed to have
almost forgotten it when the people questioned him.
"She'll leave her all her money, most likely," they said, and they
looked at this new Evelina in the old Evelina's perfumed gowns with
awe.
However, in the space of a few months the opinion upon this matter
was divided. Another cousin of Evelina Adams's came to town, and this
time an own cousin--a widow in fine black bombazine, portly and
florid, walking with a majestic swell, and, moreover, having with her
two daughters, girls of her own type, not so far advanced. This woman
hired one of the village cottages, and it was rumored that Evelina
Adams paid the rent. Still, it was considered that she was not very
intimate with these last relatives. The neighbors watched, and saw,
many a time, Mrs. Martha Loomis and her girls try the doors of the
Adams house, scudding arou
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