manner grew
unconsciously deferential. It is the most flattering homage a man can
render a woman.

Mrs. Starling had delivered her mind, and thereafter she was content to
be very civil to him. Further than that a true record cannot go. The
young officer tried to negotiate himself into her good graces; he was
attentive and respectful, and made himself entertaining. And Mrs.
Starling was entertained, and entertained him also on her part; and
Diana watched for a word of favourable comment or better judgment of
him when he was gone. None ever came; and Diana sometimes sighed when
she and her mother had shut the doors, as that night, upon each other.
For to _her_ mind the favourable comments rose unasked for.

He came very often, on one pretext or another. He began to be very much
at home. His eye used to meet her's, as something he had been looking
for and had just found; and the lingering clasp of his hand said the
touch was pleasant. Generally their interviews were in the parlour of
Diana's home; sometimes he contrived an occasion to get her to drive
with him, or to walk; and Diana never found that she could refuse
herself the pleasure, or need refuse it to him. The country was so
thinly settled, and their excursions had as yet been in such lonely
places, that no village eyes or tongues had been aroused.

So the depth of August came. The two were standing one moonlight night
at the little front gate, lingering in the moonlight. Mr. Knowlton was
going, and could not go.

"Have you heard anything about the Bear Hill party?" he asked suddenly.

"O yes; Miss Delamater came here a week ago to speak about it."

"Are you going?"

"Mother said she would. So I suppose I shall."

"Where is it? and what is it?"

"The place? Bear Hill is a very wild, stony, bare hill--at least one
side of it is bare; the other side is covered with trees. And the bare
side is covered with blackberry bushes, the largest you ever saw; and
the berries are the largest. We always go there every summer, a number
of us out of Pleasant Valley, to get blackberries."

"How far is it?"

"Fifteen miles."

"That's a good way to go a-blackberrying," said the young man, smiling.
"People hereabouts must be very fond of that fruit."

"We want them for a great many uses, you know; it isn't just to eat
them. Mother makes jam and wine for the whole year, besides what we eat
at once. And we go for the fun too, as well as for the berries."

"So it is fun