ob Worthington,
don't you? He's gone to Harvard now, but he was a great friend of mine at
Andover."

Cynthia didn't answer. It would not be fair to say that she felt a pang,
though it might add to the romance of this narrative. But her dislike for
the girl in the sleigh decidedly increased. How was she, in her
inexperience, to know that the radiant beauty in furs was what the boys
at Phillips Andover called an "old stager."

"So you live with Jethro Bass," was Miss Cassandra's next remark. "He's
rich enough to take you round the state and give you everything you
want."

"I have everything I want," replied Cynthia.

"I shouldn't call living here having everything I wanted," declared Miss
Hopkins, with a contemptuous glance at the tannery house.

"I suppose you wouldn't," said Cynthia.

Miss Hopkins was nettled. She was out of humor that day, besides she
shared some of her father's political ambition. If he went to Washington,
she went too.

"Didn't you know Jethro Bass was rich?" she demanded, imprudently. "Why,
my father gave twenty thousand dollars to be governor, and Jethro Bass
must have got half of it."

Cynthia's eyes were of that peculiar gray which, lighted by love or
anger, once seen, are never forgotten. One hand was on the dashboard of
the cutter, the other had seized the seat. Her voice was steady, and the
three words she spoke struck Miss Hopkins with startling effect.

Miss Hopkins's breath was literally taken away, and for once she found no
retort. Let it be said for her that this was a new experience with a new
creature. A demure country girl turn into a wildcat before her very eyes!
Perhaps it was as well for both that the door of the house opened and the
Honorable Alva interrupted their talk, and without so much as a glance at
Cynthia he got hurriedly into the sleigh and drove off. When Cynthia
turned, the points of color still high in her cheeks and the light still
ablaze in her eyes, she surprised Jethro gazing at her from the porch,
and some sorrow she felt rather than beheld stopped the confession on her
lips. It would be unworthy of her even to repeat such slander, and the
color surged again into her face for very shame of her anger. Cassandra
Hopkins had not been worthy of it.

Jethro did not speak, but slipped his hand into hers, and thus they stood
for a long time gazing at the snow fields between the pines on the
heights of Coniston.

The next summer, was the first which the paint