ld have violated her contract,
she would lose her salary for the month, explanations would be
necessary, and would not be forthcoming. She might feign
sickness,--indeed, it would scarcely be feigning, for she felt far from
well; she had never, since her illness, quite recovered her former
vigor--but the inconvenience to others would be the same, and her
self-sacrifice would have had, at its very first trial, a lame and
impotent conclusion. She had as yet no fear of personal violence from
Wain; but, under the circumstances, his attentions were an insult. He
was evidently bent upon conquest, and vain enough to think he might
achieve it by virtue of his personal attractions. If he could have
understood how she loathed the sight of his narrow eyes, with their
puffy lids, his thick, tobacco-stained lips, his doubtful teeth, and
his unwieldy person, Wain, a monument of conceit that he was, might
have shrunk, even in his own estimation, to something like his real
proportions. Rena believed that, to defend herself from persecution at
his hands, it was only necessary that she never let him find her alone.
This, however, required constant watchfulness. Relying upon his own
powers, and upon a woman's weakness and aversion to scandal, from which
not even the purest may always escape unscathed, and convinced by her
former silence that he had nothing serious to fear, Wain made it a
point to be present at every public place where she might be. He
assumed, in conversation with her which she could not avoid, and stated
to others, that she had left his house because of a previous promise to
divide the time of her stay between Elder Johnson's house and his own.
He volunteered to teach a class in the Sunday-school which Rena
conducted at the colored Methodist church, and when she remained to
service, occupied a seat conspicuously near her own. In addition to
these public demonstrations, which it was impossible to escape, or, it
seemed, with so thick-skinned an individual as Wain, even to
discourage, she was secretly and uncomfortably conscious that she could
scarcely stir abroad without the risk of encountering one of two men,
each of whom was on the lookout for an opportunity to find her alone.

The knowledge of Tryon's presence in the vicinity had been almost as
much as Rena could bear. To it must be added the consciousness that
he, too, was pursuing her, to what end she could not tell. After his
letter to her brother, and the f