ays, yet it was real and satisfying. I was content to live on,
one day like another, to the end of my days. If I hadn't been so
content it would be better for me now. I'd have a better chance if I
had read more, thought more, and fitted myself to be more of a
companion for a woman like Alida. If I knew a great deal and could
talk well, she might forget I'm old and homely. Bessie was so true a
friend that she would wish, if she knows, what I wish. I thought I
needed a housekeeper; I find I need more than all else such a wife as
Alida could be--one that could help me to be a man instead of a drudge,
a Christian instead of a discontented and uneasy unbeliever. At one
time, it seemed that she was leading me along so naturally and
pleasantly that I never was so happy; then all at once it came to me
that she was doing it from gratitude and a sense of duty, and the duty
grows harder for her every day. Well, there seems nothing for it now
but to go on as we began and hope that the future will bring us more in
sympathy."

Chapter XXXI.

"Never!"

For the next two or three days Jane had no occasion to observe that
Alida was in the least degree obtrusive in her attention to the farmer.
She was assiduous in her work and more diligent than ever in her
conscious efforts to do what she thought he wished; but she was growing
pale, constrained, and silent. She struggled heroically to appear as
at first, but without much success, for she could not rally from the
wound he had given her so unintentionally and which Jane's words had
deepened. She almost loathed herself under her association with Mrs.
Mumpson, and her morbid thoughts had hit upon a worse reason for
Holcroft's apparent repulsion. As she questioned everything in the
sleepless hours that followed the interview in the garden, she came to
the miserable conclusion that he had discovered her love, and that by
suggestion, natural to his mind, it reminded him of her pitiful story.
He could be sorry for her and be kind; he could even be her honest
friend and protector as a wronged and unhappy woman, but he could not
love one with a history like hers and did not wish her to love him.
This seemed an adequate explanation of the change in their relations,
but she felt that it was one under which her life would wither and her
heart break.

This promised to be worse than what she had dreaded at the
almshouse--the facing the world alone and working till she died among
str