e, the lifeless features,
the dispirited eyes with their bluish circles.

"What a fool I have been to imagine he could care for me!" she said
bitterly. "He has only been amusing himself with my folly. And to
think that I let him kiss me the other night!"

She thought of that kiss with a pitiful shame. She hated herself for
the weakness that could not check her tears. Her lonely life had been
brightened by the companionship of her young lover. The youth and
girlhood of which fate had cheated her had come to her with love; the
future had looked rosy with promise; now it had darkened with dourness
and greyness.

Maggie Hatfield came that day to sew. Bessy had intended to have a
dark-blue silk made up and an evening waist of pale pink cashmere. She
had expected to wear the latter at a party which was to come off a
fortnight later, and she had got it to please Lawrence, because he had
told her that pink was his favourite colour. She would have neither it
nor the silk made up now. She put them both away and instead brought
out an ugly pattern of snuff-brown stuff, bought years before and
never used.

"But where is your lovely pink, Bessy?" asked the dressmaker. "Aren't
you going to have it for the party?"

"No, I'm not going to have it made up at all," said Bessy listlessly.
"It's too gay for me. I was foolish to think it would ever suit me.
This brown will do for a spring suit. It doesn't make much difference
what I wear."

Maggie Hatfield, who had not been at prayer meeting the night
beforehand knew nothing of what had occurred, looked at her curiously,
wondering what Lawrence Eastman could see in her to be as crazy about
her as some people said he was. Bessy was looking her oldest and
plainest just then, with her hair combed severely back from her pale,
dispirited face.

"It must be her money he is after," thought the dressmaker. "She looks
over thirty, and she can't pretend to be pretty. I believe she thinks
a lot of him, though."

For the most part, Lynnfield people believed that Bessy had thrown
Lawrence over. This opinion was borne out by his woebegone appearance.
He was thin and pale; his face had lost its youthful curves and looked
hard and mature. He was moody and taciturn and his speech and manner
were marked by a new cynicism.

* * * * *

In April a well-to-do storekeeper from an adjacent village began to
court Bessy Houghton. He was over fifty, and had never been a han