athsheba?" Myrtle asked.

"Why, Myrtle, don't you remember about Susan Posey's is-to-be,--the
young man that has been well, I don't know, but I suppose engaged to her
ever since they were children almost?"

"Yes, yes, I remember now. Oh dear! I have forgotten so many things, I
should think I had been dead and was coming back to life again. Do you
know anything about him, Bathsheba? Did n't somebody say he was very
handsome? I wonder if he is really in love with Susan Posey. Such a
simple thing? I want to see him. I have seen so few young men."

As Myrtle said these words, she lifted the sleeve a little on her left
arm, by a half-instinctive and half-voluntary movement. The glimmering
gold of Judith Pride's bracelet flashed out the yellow gleam which has
been the reddening of so many hands and the blackening of so, many
souls since that innocent sin-breeder was first picked up in the land of
Havilah. There came a sudden light into her eye, such as Bathsheba
had never seen there before. It looked to her as if Myrtle were saying
unconsciously to herself that she had the power of beauty, and would
like to try its influence on the handsome young man whom she was soon to
meet, even at the risk of unseating poor little Susan in his affections.
This pained the gentle and humble-minded girl, who, without having
tasted the world's pleasures, had meekly consecrated herself to the
lowly duties which lay nearest to her. For Bathsheba's phrasing of life
was in the monosyllables of a rigid faith. Her conceptions of the human
soul were all simplicity and purity, but elementary. She could not
conceive the vast license the creative energy allows itself in mingling
the instincts which, after long conflict, may come into harmonious
adjustment. The flash which Myrtle's eye had caught from the gleam of
the golden bracelet filled Bathsheba with a sudden fear that she was
like to be led away by the vanities of that world lying in wickedness of
which the minister's daughter had heard so much and seen so little.

Not that Bathsheba made any fine moral speeches, to herself. She only
felt a slight shock, such as a word or a look from one we love too often
gives us,--such as a child's trivial gesture or movement makes a
parent feel,--that impalpable something which in the slightest possible
inflection of a syllable or gradation of a tone will sometimes leave a
sting behind it, even in a trusting heart. This was all. But it was true
that what she