d not withdraw, simply
because he was disappointed, without cruelty, without atrocity.

This was what the girl's wistful eyes said to him; this was the reproach
of her trembling lips; this was the accusation of her dejected figure,
as she drooped in vision before him on the piano-stool and passed her
hand soundlessly over the key-board. He tried to own to her that he was
disappointed, but he could not get the words out of his throat; and now
in her presence, as it were, he was not sure that he was disappointed.

X.

He woke late, with a longing to put his two senses of her to the proof
of day; and as early in the forenoon as he could hope to see her, he
walked out towards her aunt's house. It was a mild, dull morning, with a
misted sunshine; in the little crimson tassels of the budded maples
overhead the bees were droning.

The street was straight, and while he was yet a good way off he saw the
gate open before the house, and a girl whom he recognized as Miss
Bingham close it behind her. She then came down under the maples towards
him, at first swiftly, and then more and more slowly, until finally she
faltered to a stop. He quickened his own pace and came up to her with a
"Good-morning" called to her and a lift of his hat. She returned neither
salutation, and said, "I was coming to see you, Mr. Langbourne." Her
voice was still a silver bell, but it was not gay, and her face was
severely unsmiling.

"To see _me_?" he returned. "Has anything--"

"No, there's nothing the matter. But--I should like to talk with you."
She held a little packet, tied with blue ribbon, in her intertwined
hands, and she looked urgently at him.

"I shall be very glad," Langbourne began, but she interrupted,--

"Should you mind walking down to the Falls?"

He understood that for some reason she did not wish him to pass the
house, and he bowed. "Wherever you like. I hope Mrs. Simpson is well?
And Miss Simpson?"

"Oh, perfectly," said Miss Bingham, and they fenced with some questions
and answers of no interest till they had walked back through the village
to the Falls at the other end of it, where the saw in a mill was
whirring through a long pine log, and the water, streaked with sawdust,
was spreading over the rocks below and flowing away with a smooth
swiftness. The ground near the mill was piled with fresh-sawed, fragrant
lumber and strewn with logs.

Miss Bingham found a comfortable place on one of the logs, and began
abruptly: