ps
tightened ominously and her eyes narrowed.

"You're a bigger fool than I took you for," she said in a voice that
trembled with anger. "Bessy Houghton laughs at you everywhere. She
knows you're just after her money, and she makes fun--"

"Prove it," interrupted Lawrence undauntedly, "I'm not going to put
any faith in Lynnfield gossip. Prove it if you can."

"I can prove it. Maggie Hatfield told me what Bessy Houghton said to
her about you. She said you were a lovesick fool, and she only went
with you for a little amusement, and that if you thought you had
nothing to do but marry her and hang up your hat there you'd find
yourself vastly mistaken."

Possibly in her calmer moments Mrs. Eastman might have shrunk from
such a deliberate falsehood, although it was said of her in Lynnfield
that she was not one to stick at a lie when the truth would not serve
her purpose. Moreover, she felt quite sure that Lawrence would never
ask Maggie Hatfield anything about it.

Lawrence turned white to the lips, "Is that true, Mother?" he asked
huskily.

"I've warned you," replied his mother, not choosing to repeat her
statement. "If you go after Bessy any more you can take the
consequences."

She drew her shawl about her pale, malicious face and left him with a
parting glance of contempt.

"I guess that'll settle him," she thought grimly. "Bessy Houghton
turned up her nose at George, but she shan't make a fool of Lawrence
too."

Alone in the stable Lawrence stood staring out at the dull red ball of
the winter sun with unseeing eyes. He had implicit faith in his
mother, and the stab had gone straight to his heart. Bessy Houghton
listened in vain that night for his well-known footfall on the
verandah.

The next night Lawrence went home with Milly Fiske from prayer
meeting, taking her out from a crowd of other girls under Bessy
Houghton's very eyes as she came down the steps of the little church.

Bessy walked home alone. The light burned low in her sitting-room, and
in the mirror over the mantel she saw her own pale face, with its
tragic, pain-stricken eyes. Annie Hillis, her "help," was out. She was
alone in the big house with her misery and despair.

She went dizzily upstairs to her own room and flung herself on the bed
in the chill moonlight.

"It is all over," she said dully. All night she lay there, fighting
with her pain. In the wan, grey morning she looked at her mirrored
self with pitying scorn--at the pallid fac