om that
time forth for ever. Once known, it was too precious a thought
to be again untasted. She hung her head over it; she stepped
all unwittingly on rocks and short grass and wet places and
dry, wherever she was led. It made her heart beat thick to
think she could be so valued. How was it possible! How she
wished -- how keenly -- that she could have been of the solid
purity of silver or gold, to answer the value put upon her.
But instead of that -- what a far-off difference! Winthrop
could not know how great, or he would never have said that, or
felt it; nor could he. What about her could possibly have
attracted it?

She had not much leisure to ponder the question, for her
attention was called off to answer present demands. And there
was another subject for pondering -- Winthrop did not seem like
the same person she had known under the same name, he was so
much more free and pleasant and bright to talk than he had
ever been to her before, or in her observation, to anybody. He
talked to a very silent listener, albeit she lost never a word
nor a tone. She wondered at him and at everything, and stepped
along wondering, with a heart too full to speak, almost too
full to hide its agitation.

They were nearing home, they had got quit of the woodway road,
and were in a cleared field, grown with tall cedars, which
skirted the river. Half way across it, Elizabeth's foot
paused, and came to a full stop. What was the matter?

Elizabeth faced round a little, as if addressing her judge,
though she spoke without lifting her eyes.

"Mr. Landholm -- do you know that I am _full_ of faults?"

"Yes."

"And aren't you afraid of them?"

"No, -- not at all," he said, smiling, Elizabeth knew. But she
answered very gravely,

"I am."

"Which is the best reason in the world why I should not be. It
is written 'Blessed is the man that feareth always.'"

"I am afraid -- you don't know me."

"I don't know," said he smiling. "You haven't told me anything
new yet."

"I am afraid you think of me, somehow, better than I deserve."

"What is the remedy for that?"

Elizabeth hesitated, with an instant's vexed consciousness of
his provoking coolness; then looking up met his eye for a
second, laughed, and went on perfectly contented. But she
wondered with a little secret mortification, that Winthrop was
as perfectly at home and at his ease in the newly established
relations between them as if they had subsisted for six
months. "Is i