f forage, felt indignant that he had not doubled
his price, and let them think.

Alack-a-day and all the year round! that men perceive not how the women
differ from them in the very source of thought Albert never dreamed
that his cousin, after doing so long without him, had now relapsed quite
suddenly into her childish dependence upon him. And when she heard, on
the following day, that he was gone for the lofty purpose of selling his
seven ricks of hay, she said not a word, but only felt her cold heart so
much colder.

CHAPTER VIII.

She had nothing now to do, and nobody to speak to; though her father
did his utmost, in his kind and clumsy way, to draw his darling close
to him. But she knew that all along he had disliked her idol, and she
fancied, now and then, that this dislike had had something perhaps to do
with what had befallen her. This, of course, was wrong on her part. But
when youth and faith are wronged, the hurt is very apt to fly to all the
tender places. Even the weather also seemed to have taken a turn against
her. No wholesome frost set in to brace the slackened joints and make
her walk until she began to tingle; neither was there any snow to spread
a new cast on the rocks and gift the trees with airiness; nor even what
mild winters, for the most part, bring in counterpoise--soft, obedient
skies, and trembling pleasure of the air and earth. But--as over her own
love--over all the country hung just enough of mist and chill to shut
out cheerful prospect, and not enough to shut folk in to the hearth of
their own comfort.

In her dull, forlorn condition, Frida still, through force of habit or
the love of solitude, made her daily round of wood and rock, seashore
and moorland. Things seemed to come across her now, instead of her going
to them, and her spirit failed at every rise of the hilly road against
her. In that dreary way she lingered, hoping nothing, fearing nothing,
showing neither sigh nor tear, only seeking to go somewhere and be lost
from self and sorrow in the cloudy and dark day.

Often thus the soft, low moaning of the sea encompassed her, where she
stood, in forgotten beauty, careless of the wind and wave. The short,
uneasy heave of waters in among the kelpy rocks, flowing from no swell
or furrow on the misty glass of sea, but like a pulse of discontent,
and longing to go further; after the turn, the little rattle of invaded
pebbles, the lithe relapse and soft, shampooing lambency of o