"Why! — it's not necessary to explain how I make it out," said
Elizabeth.
"No, — especially as I am going to ask you to give it to me for the future."
"What?" — said she looking at him.
He became grave.
"Miss Haye, I have a great boon to ask of you."
"Well?" — said Elizabeth eagerly. "I am very glad you have!"
"Why?"
"Why? — why, because it's pleasant."
"You don't know what it is, yet."
"No," said Elizabeth, — "but my words are safe."
"I want you to give me something."
"You preface it as if it were some great thing, and you look as if it was nothing," thought Elizabeth a little in wonderment. But she said only,
"You may have it. What is it?"
"Guess."
"I can't possibly."
"You are incautious. You don't know what you are giving away."
"What is it?" said Elizabeth a little impatiently.
"Yourself."
Elizabeth looked quick away, not to see anything, with the mind's eye or any other, for a blur came over both. She was no fainter; she was strong of mind and body; but the one and the other were shaken; and for that bit of time, and it was several minutes, her senses performed no office at all. And when consciousness of distinct things began to come back, there came among all her other feelings an odd perverse fear of shewing the uppermost one or two, and a sort of mortified unreadiness to strike her colours and yield at once without having made a bit of fight for it. Yet these were not the uppermost feelings, but they were there, among them and struggling with them. She stood quite still, her face hidden by her sunbonnet, and her companion was quite still too, with her hand still in his, held in the same free light clasp; and she had a vexed consciousness of his being far the cooler of the two. While she was thus silent, however, Elizabeth's head, and her very figure, was bowed lower and lower with intensity of feeling.
"What is the matter?" Winthrop said; and the tone of those words conquered her. The proud Miss Haye made a very humble answer.
"I am very glad, Mr. Landholm — but I am not good enough."
"For what?"
But Elizabeth did not answer.
"I will take my risk of that," said he kindly. "Besides, you have confessed the power of changing."
The risk, or something else, seemed to lie upon Elizabeth's mind, from the efforts she was making to overcome emotion. Winthrop observed her for a moment.
"But you have not spoken, yet," said he. "I want a confirmation of my grant."
She knew from his tone that his mood was the very reverse of hers; and it roused the struggle again. "Provoking man!" she thought, "why couldn't he ask me in any other way! — And why need he smile when I am crying! —" She commanded herself to raise her head, however, though she did not dare look.
"Am I to have it?"
"To have what?"
"An answer."
"I don't know what it's to be, Mr. Landholm," Elizabeth stammered. "What do you want?"
"Will you give me what I asked you for?"
"I thought you knew you had it already," she said, not a little vexed to have the words drawn from her.
"It is mine, then?"
"Yes —"
"Then," said he, coming in full view of her blushing face and taking the other hand, — "what are you troubled for?"
Elizabeth could not have borne it one instant, to meet his eye, without breaking into a flood of tears she had no hands to cover. As her only way of escape, she sprang to one side freeing one of her hands on the sudden, and jumped down the rock, muttering something very unintelligibly about 'breakfast.' But her other hand was fast still, and so was she at the foot of the rock.
"Stop," said Winthrop, — "we must take this basket along. — I don't know if there is anything very precious in it." —
He reached after it as he spoke, and then they went on; and by the help of his hand her backward journey over rocks, stones, and trunks of trees in the path, was easily and lightly made; till they reached the little bit of meadow. Which backward journey Elizabeth accomplished in about two minutes and a quarter. There Winthrop transferred to his arm the hand that had rested in his, and walked more leisurely.
"Are you in such a hurry for your breakfast?" said he. "I have had mine."
"Had it! — before you came out?"
"No," — said he smiling, — "since."
"Are you laughing at me? — or have you had it?" said Elizabeth looking puzzled.
"Both," said Winthrop. "What are you trembling so for?"
It hushed Elizabeth again, till they got quit of the meadow, and began more slowly still, the ascent of the rough half-made wheel-road.
"Miss Haye —" said Winthrop gently.
She paused in her walk, looking at him.
"What are you thinking of?"
"Thinking of! —"
"Yes. You don't look as happy as I feel."
"I am," — she said.
"How do you know?"
What a colour spread over Elizabeth's face! But she laughed too, so perhaps his end was gained.
"I was thinking," she said, with the desperate need of saying something, — "a little while ago, when you were helping me through the woods, — how a very few minutes before, I had been so quite alone in the world."
"Don't forget there is one arm that never can fail you," he replied gravely. "Mine may."
Elizabeth looked at him rather timidly, and his face changed.
"There was no harm in that," he said, with so bright an expression as she had never before seen given to her. "What will you say, if I tell you that I myself at that same time was thinking over in my mind very much the same thing — with relation to myself, I mean."
Elizabeth's heart beat and her breath came short. That was what she had never thought of. Like many another woman, what he was to her, she knew well; what she might be to him, it had never entered her head to think. It seemed almost a new and superfluous addition to her joy, yet not superfluous from that time forth for ever. Once known, it was too precious a thought to be again untasted. She hung her head over it; she stepped all unwittingly on rocks and short grass and wet places and dry, wherever she was led. It made her heart beat thick to think she could be so valued. How was it possible! How she wished — how keenly — that she could have been of the solid purity of silver or gold, to answer the value put upon her. But instead of that — what a far-off difference! Winthrop could not know how great, or he would never have said that, or felt it; nor could he. What about her could possibly have attracted it?
She had not much leisure to ponder the question, for her attention was called off to answer present demands. And there was another subject for pondering — Winthrop did not seem like the same person she had known under the same name, he was so much more free and pleasant and bright to talk than he had ever been to her before, or in her observation, to anybody. He talked to a very silent listener, albeit she lost never a word nor a tone. She wondered at him and at everything, and stepped along wondering, with a heart too full to speak, almost too full to hide its agitation.
They were nearing home, they had got quit of the woodway road, and were in a cleared field, grown with tall cedars, which skirted the river. Half way across it, Elizabeth's foot paused, and came to a full stop. What was the matter?
Elizabeth faced round a little, as if addressing her judge, though she spoke without lifting her eyes.
"Mr. Landholm — do you know that I am full of faults?"
"Yes."
"And aren't you afraid of them?"
"No, — not at all," he said, smiling, Elizabeth knew. But she answered very gravely,
"I am."
"Which is the best reason in the world why I should not be. It is written 'Blessed is the man that feareth always.'"
"I am afraid — you don't know me."
"I don't know," said he smiling. "You haven't told me anything new yet."
"I am afraid you think of me, somehow, better than I deserve."
"What is the remedy for that?"
Elizabeth hesitated, with an instant's vexed consciousness of his provoking coolness; then looking up met his eye for a second, laughed, and went on perfectly contented. But she wondered with a little secret mortification, that Winthrop was as perfectly at home and at his ease in the newly established relations between them as if they had subsisted for six months. "Is it nothing new to him?" she said to herself. "Did he know that it only depended on him to speak? — or is it his way with all the world?" It was not that she was undervalued, or slightly regarded, but valued and regarded with such unchanged self-possession. Meanwhile they reached the edge of the woodland, from which the house and garden were to be seen close at hand.
"Stay here," said Winthrop; — "I will carry this basket in and let them know you may be expected to breakfast."
"But if you do that, —" said Elizabeth colouring —
"What then?"
"I don't know what they will think."
"They may think what they have a mind," said he with a little bit of a smile again. "I want to speak to you."
Elizabeth winced a bit. He was gone, and she stood thinking, among other things, that he might have asked what she would like. And how did he know but breakfast was ready then? Or did he know everything? And how quietly and unqualifiedly, to be sure, he had taken her consignment that morning. She did not know whether to like it or not like it, — till she saw him coming again from the house.
"After all," said he, "I think we had better go in and take breakfast, and talk afterwards. It seems to be in a good state of forwardness."
CHAPTER XVIII.
From eastern quarters now
The sun's up-wandering,
His rays on the rock's brow
And hill-side squandering;
Be glad my soul! and sing amidst thy pleasure,
Fly from the house of dust,
Up with thy thanks and trust
To heaven's azure!
THOMAS KINGO.
It was sufficiently proven at that breakfast, to Elizabeth's satisfaction, that it is possible for one to be at the same time both very happy and a little uncomfortable. She had a degree of consciousness upon her that amounted to that, more especially as she had a vexed knowledge that it was shared by at least one person in the room. The line of Clam's white teeth had never glimmered more mischievously. Elizabeth dared not look at her. And she dared not look at Winthrop, and she dared not look at Rose. But Rose, to do her justice, seemed to be troubled with no consciousness beyond what was usual with her, and which generally concerned only herself; and she and Winthrop kept up the spirit of talk with great ease all breakfast time.
"Now how in the world are we going to get away?" thought
Elizabeth when breakfast was finishing; — "without saying flat
and bald why we do it. Rose will want to go too, for she likes
Winthrop quite well enough for that." —
And with the consciousness that she could not make the slightest manoeuvre, Elizabeth rose from table.
"How soon must you go, Mr. Landholm?" said Rose winningly.
"Presently, ma'am."
"I am sorry you must go so soon! But we haven't a room to ask you to sit down in, if you were to stay."
"I am afraid I shouldn't wait to be asked, if I stayed," said Winthrop. "But as I am not to sit down again — Miss Haye — if you will put on your bonnet and give me your company a little part of my way, I will keep my promise."
"What promise?" said Rose.
"I will do better than my promise, for I mean to shew Miss Haye a point of her property which perhaps she has not looked at lately."
"Oh will you shew it to me too?" said Rose.
"I will if there is time enough after I have brought Miss Haye back — I can't take both at once."
Rose looked mystified, and Elizabeth very glad to put on her bonnet, was the first out of the house; half laughing, and half trembling with the excitement of getting off.
"There is no need to be in such a hurry," said Winthrop as he came up, — "now that breakfast is over."
Elizabeth was silent, troubled with that consciousness still, though now alone with the subject of it. He turned off from the road, and led her back into the woods a little way, in the same path by which she had once gone hunting for a tree to cut down.
"It isn't as pretty a time of day as when I went out this morning," she said, forcing herself to say something.
But Winthrop seemed in a state of pre-occupation too; till they reached a boulder capped with green ferns.
"Now give me your hand," said he. "Can you climb?"
They turned short by the boulder and began to mount the steep rugged hill-path, down which he had once carried his little sister. Elizabeth could make better footing than poor Winifred; and very soon they stood on the old height from which they could see the fair Shatemuc coming down between the hills and sweeping round their own little woody Shahweetah and off to the South Bend. The sun was bright on all the land now, though the cedars shielded the bit of hill-top well; and Wut- a-qut-o looked down upon them in all his gay Autumn attire. The sun was bright, but the air was clear and soft and free from mist and cloud and obscurity, as no sky is but October's.
"Sit down," said Winthrop, throwing himself on the bank which was carpeted with very short green grass.
"I would just as lieve stand," said Elizabeth.
"I wouldn't as lieve have you. You've been on your feet long enough to-day. Come! —"
She yielded to the gentle pulling of her hand, and sat down on the grass; half amused and half fretted; wondering what he was going to say next. Winthrop was silent for a little space; and Elizabeth sat looking straight before her, or rather with her head a little turned to the right, from her companion, towards Wut-a-qut-o; the deep sides of her sun-bonnet shutting out all but a little framed picture of the gay woody foreground, a bit of the blue river, and the mountain's yellow side.
"How beautiful it was all down there, three or four hours ago," said Elizabeth.
"I didn't know you had so much romance in your disposition — to go there this morning to meet me."
"I didn't go there to meet you."
"Yes you did."
"I didn't!" said Elizabeth. "I never thought of such a thing as meeting you."
"Nevertheless, in the regular chain and sequence of events, you went there to meet me — if you hadn't gone you wouldn't have met me."
"O, if you put it in that way," said Elizabeth, — "there's no harm in that."
"There is no harm in it at all. Quite the contrary."
"I think it was the prettiest walk I ever took in my life," said Elizabeth, — "before that, I mean," she added blushing.
"My experience would say, after it," said Winthrop, in an amused tone.
"It was rather a confused walk after that," said Elizabeth. "I never was quite so much surprised."
"You see I had not that disadvantage. I was only — gratified."
"Why," said Elizabeth, her jealous fear instantly starting again, "you didn't know what my answer would be before you asked me?"
She waited for Winthrop's answer, but none came. Elizabeth could not bear it.
"Did you?" she said, looking round in her eagerness.
He hesitated an instant, and then answered,
"Did you?"
Elizabeth had no words. Her face sought the shelter of her sunbonnet again, and she almost felt as if she would have liked to seek the shelter of the earth bodily, by diving down into it. Her brain was swimming. There was a rush of thoughts and ideas, a train of scattered causes and consequences, which then she had no power to set in order; but the rush almost overwhelmed her, and what was wanting, shame added. She was vexed with herself for her jealousy in divining and her impatience in asking foolish questions; and in her vexation was ready to be vexed with Winthrop, — if she only knew how. She longed to lay her head down in her hands, but pride kept it up. She rested her chin on one hand and wondered when Winthrop would speak again, — she could not, — and what he would say; gazing at the blue bit of water and gay mountain- side, and thinking that she was not giving him a particularly favourable specimen of herself that morning, and vexed out of measure to think it.
Then upon this, a very quietly spoken "Elizabeth!" — came to her ear. It was the first time Winthrop had called her so; but that was not all. Quietly spoken as it was, there was not only a little inquiry, there was a little amusement and a little admonition, in the tone. It stirred Elizabeth to her spirit's depths, but with several feelings; and for the life of her she could not have spoken.
"What is the reason you should hide your face so carefully from me?" he went on presently, much in the same tone. "Mine is open to you — it isn't fair play."
Elizabeth could have laughed if she had not been afraid of crying. She kept herself hid in her sunbonnet and made no reply.
"Suppose you take that thing off, and let me look at you."
"It shades my face from the sun."
"The cedar trees will do that for you."
"No — they wouldn't."
And she kept her face steadily fixed upon the opposite shore, only brought straight before her now; thinking to herself that she would carry this point at any rate. But in another minute she was somewhat astounded to find Winthrop's left hand, he was supporting himself carelessly on his right, quietly, very quietly, untying her sunbonnet strings; and then rousing himself, with the other hand he lifted the bonnet from her head. It gave a full view then of hair in very nice order and a face not quite so; for the colour had now flushed to her very temples with more feelings than one, and her eye was downcast, not caring to shew its revelations. She knew that Winthrop took an observation of all, to his heart's content; but she could not look at him for an instant. Then without saying anything, he got up and went off to a little distance where he made himself busy among some of the bushes and vines which were gay with the fall colouring Elizabeth sat drooping her head on her knees, for she could not absolutely hold it up. She looked at her sunbonnet lying on the bank beside her; but it is not an improper use of language to say that she dared not put it on.
"I have met my master now," she thought, and her eyes sparkled, — "once for all — if I never did before. — What a fool I am!"
For she knew, she acknowledged to herself at the same moment, that she did not like him the less for it — she liked him exceedingly the more; in spite of a twinge of deep mortification about it, and though there was bitter shame that he should know or guess any of her feeling. If her eyes sparkled, they sparkled through tears.
The tears were got rid of, for Winthrop came back and threw himself down again. Then with that he began to put wreaths of the orange and red winterberries and sprays of wych hazel and bits of exquisite ivy, one after the other, into her hands. Her hands took them mechanically, one after the other. Her eyes buried themselves in them. She wished for her sunbonnet shield again.
"What do you bring these to me for?" she said rather abruptly.
"Don't you like to have them?" said he, putting into her fingers another magnificent piece of Virginia creeper.
"Yes indeed — very much — but —"
"It will be some time before I see you again," said he as he added the last piece of his bunch. "These will be all gone."
"Some time!" said Elizabeth.
"Yes. There is work on my hands down yonder that admits of no delay. I could but just snatch time enough to come up here."
"I am very much obliged to you for these!" said Elizabeth, returning to her bunch of brilliant vine branches.
"You can pay me for them in any way you please."
The colour started again, but it was a very gentle, humble, and frank look which she turned round upon him. His was bright enough.
"How soon do you think of coming to Mannahatta?"
"I don't know, —" said Elizabeth, not choosing to say exactly the words that came to her tongue.
"If I could be here too, I should say this is the best place."
"Can't you come often enough?"
"How often would be often enough?" said he with an amused look.
"Leave definitions on one side, and please answer me."
"Willingly. I leave the definition on your side. I don't like to speak in the dark."
"Well, can't you come tolerably often?" said Elizabeth colouring.
He smiled.
"Not for some time. My hands are very full just now."
"You contrive to have them so always, don't you?"
"I like to have them so. It is not always my contrivance."
"What has become of that suit — I don't know the names now — in which you were engaged two or three years ago — in which you took so many objections, and the Chancellor allowed them all, against Mr. Brick?"
"Ryle?"
"Yes! — I believe that's the name."
"For a man called Jean Lessing?"
"I don't know anything about Lessing — I think Ryle was the other name —You were against Ryle."
"Lessing was Mr. Herder's brother-in-law."
"I don't remember Mr. Herder's brother-in-law — though I believe Mr. Herder did have something to do with the case, or some interest in it."
"How did you know anything about it?"
"You haven't answered me," said Elizabeth, laughing and colouring brightly.
"One question is as good as another," said Winthrop smiling.
"But one answer is much better than another," said Elizabeth in a little confusion.
"The suit against Ryle was very successful. I recovered for him some ninety thousand dollars."
"Ninety thousand dollars!" — Her thoughts took somewhat of a wide circle and came back.
"The amount recovered is hardly a fair criterion of the skill employed, in every instance. I must correct your judgment."
"I know more about it than that," said Elizabeth. "How far your education has gone! — and mine is only just beginning."
"I should be sorry to think mine was much more than beginning.
Now do you know we must go down? — for I must be at Mountain
Spring to meet the stage-coach."
"How soon?" said Elizabeth springing up.
"There is time enough, but I want not to hurry you down the hill."
He had put her sunbonnet on her head again and was retying it.
"Mr. Landholm —"
"You must not call me that," he said.
"Let me, till I can get courage to call you something else."
"How much courage does it want?"
"If you don't stop," said Elizabeth, her eyes filling with tears, "I shall not be able to say one word of what I want to say."
He stood still, holding the strings of her sunbonnet in either hand. Elizabeth gathered breath, or courage, and went on.
"A little while ago I was grieving myself to think that you did not know me — now, I am very much ashamed to think that you do." —
He did not move, nor she.
"I know I am not worthy to have you look at me. My only hope is, that you will make me better."
The bonnet did not hide her face this time. He looked at it a little, at the simplicity of ingenuous trouble which was working in it, — and then pushing the bonnet a little back, kissed first one cheek and then the lips, which by that time were bent down almost out of reach. But he reached them; and Elizabeth was obliged to take her answer, in which there was as much of gentle forgiveness and promise as of affection.
"You see what you have to expect, if you talk to me in this strain," said he lightly. "I think I shall not be troubled with much more of it. I don't like to leave you in this frame of mind. I would take you to Mountain Spring in the boat — if I could bring you back again."
"I could bring myself back," said Elizabeth. They were going down the hill; in the course of which, it may be remarked, Winthrop had no reason to suppose that she once saw anything but the ground.
"I am afraid you are too tired."
"No indeed I am not. I should like it — if there is time."
"Go in less time that way than the other."
So they presently reached the lower ground.
"Do you want anything from the house?" said Winthrop as they came near it.
"Only the oars — If you will get those, I will untie the boat."
"Then I'll not get the oars. I'll get them on condition that you stand still here."
So they went down together to the rocks, and Elizabeth put herself in the stern of the little boat and they pushed off.
To any people who could think of anything but each other, October offered enough to fill eyes, ears, and understanding; that is, if ears can be filled with silence, which perhaps is predicable. Absolute silence on this occasion was wanting, as there was a good deal of talking; but for eyes and understanding, perhaps it may safely be said that those of the two people in the Merry-go-round took the benefit of everything they passed on their way; with a reduplication of pleasure which arose from the throwing and catching of that ball of conversation, in which, like the herb-stuffed ball of the Arabian physician of old, — lay perdu certain hidden virtues, of sympathy. But Shahweetah's low rocky shore never offered more beauty to any eyes, than to theirs that day, as they coasted slowly round it. Colours, colours! If October had been a dyer, he could not have shewn a greater variety of samples.
There were some locust trees in the open cedar-grown field by the river; trees that Mr. Landholm had planted long ago. They were slow to turn, yet they were changing. One soft feathery head was in yellowish green, another of more neutral colour; and blending with them were the tints of a few reddish soft- tinted alders below. That group was not gay. Further on were a thicket of dull coloured alders at the edge of some flags, and above them blazed a giant huckleberry bush in bright flame colour; close by that were the purple red tufts of some common sumachs — the one beautifully rich, the other beautifully striking. A little way from them stood a tulip tree, its green changing with yellow. Beyond came cedars, in groups, wreathed with bright tawny grape vines and splendid Virginia creepers, now in full glory. Above their tops, on the higher ground, was a rich green belt of pines — above them, the changing trees of the forest again.
Here shewed an elm its straw-coloured head — there stood an ash in beautiful grey-purple; very stately. The cornus family in rich crimson — others crimson purple; maples shewing yellow and flame-colour and red all at once; one beauty still in green was orange-tipped with rich orange. The birches were a darker hue of the same colour; hickories bright as gold.
Then came the rocks, and rocky precipitous point of Shahweetah; and the echo of the row-locks from the wall. Then the point was turned, and the little boat sought the bottom of the bay, nearing Mountain Spring all the while. The water was glassy smooth; the boat went — too fast.
Down in the bay the character of the woodland was a little different. It was of fuller growth, and with many fewer evergreens, and some addition to the variety of the changing deciduous leaves. When they got quite to the bottom of the bay and were coasting along close under the shore, there was perhaps a more striking display of Autumn's glories at their side, than the rocks of Shahweetah could shew them. They coasted slowly along, looking and talking. The combinations were beautiful.
There was the dark fine bright red of some pepperidges shewing behind the green of an unchanged maple; near by stood another maple the leaves of which were all seemingly withered, a plain reddish light wood-colour; while below its withered foliage a thrifty poison sumach wreathing round its trunk and lower branches, was in a beautiful confusion of fresh green and the orange and red changes, yet but just begun. Then another slight maple with the same dead wood-coloured leaves, into which to the very top a Virginia creeper had twined itself, and that was now brilliantly scarlet, magnificent in the last degree. Another like it a few trees off — both reflected gorgeously in the still water. Rock oaks were part green and part sear; at the edge of the shore below them a quantity of reddish low shrubbery; the cornus, dark crimson and red brown, with its white berries shewing underneath, and more pepperidges in very bright red. One maple stood with its leaves parti-coloured reddish and green — another with beautiful orange-coloured foliage. Ashes in superb very dark purple; they were all changed. Then alders, oaks, and chestnuts still green. A kaleidoscope view, on water and land, as the little boat glided along sending rainbow ripples in towards the shore.
In the bottom of the bay Winthrop brought the boat to land, under a great red oak which stood in its fair dark green beauty yet at the very edge of the water. Mountain Spring was a little way off, hidden by an outsetting point of woods. As the boat touched the tree-roots, Winthrop laid in the oars and came and took a seat by the boat's mistress.
"Are you going to walk to Mountain Spring the rest of the way?" she said.
"No."
"Will the stage-coach take you up here?"
"If it comes, it will. What are you going to do with yourself now, till I see you again?"
"There's enough to do," said Elizabeth sighing. "I am going to try to behave myself. How soon will the coach be here now?"
"I think, not until I have seen you about half way over the bay on your way home."
"O you will not see me," said Elizabeth. "I am not going before the coach does."
"Yes you are."
"What makes you think so?"
"Because it will not come till I have seen you at least, I should judge, half across the bay."
"But I don't want to go."
"You are so unaccustomed to doing things you don't want to do, that it is good discipline for you."
"Do you mean that seriously?" said Elizabeth, looking a little disturbed.
"I mean it half seriously," said he laughing, getting up to push the boat to shore, which had swung a little off.
"But nobody likes, or wants, self-imposed discipline," said
Elizabeth.
"This isn't self-imposed — I impose it," said he throwing the rope round a branch of the tree. "I don't mean anything that need make you look so," he added as he came back to his place.
Elizabeth looked up and her brow cleared.
"I dare say you are right," she said. "I will do just as you please."
"Stop a minute," said he gently taking her hand — "What do you 'dare say' I am right about?"
"This — or anything," Elizabeth said, her eye wavering between the water and the shore.
"I don't want you to think that."
"But how am I going to help it?"
He smiled a little and looked grave too.
"I am going to give you a lesson to study."
"Well? —" said Elizabeth with quick pleasure; and she watched, very like a child, while Winthrop sought in his pocket and brought out an old letter, tore off a piece of the back and wrote on his knee with a pencil.
Then he gave it to her.
But it was the precept, —
'Little children, keep yourselves from idols.'
Elizabeth's face changed, and her eyes lifted themselves not up again. The colour rose, and spread, and deepened, and her head only bent lower down over the paper. That thrust was with a barbed weapon. And there was a profound hush, and a bended head and a pained brow, till a hand came gently between her eyes and the paper and occupied the fingers that held it. It was the same hand that her fancy had once seen full of character — she saw it again now; her thoughts made a spring hack to that time and then to this. She looked up.
It was a look to see. There was a witching mingling of the frank, the childlike, and the womanly, in her troubled face; frankness that would not deny the truth that her monitor seemed to have read, a childlike simplicity of shame that he should have divined it, and a womanly self-respect that owned it had nothing to be ashamed of. These were not all the feelings that were at work, nor that shewed their working; and it was a face of brilliant expression that Elizabeth lifted to her companion. In the cheeks the blood spoke brightly; in the eyes, fire; there was more than one tear there, too; and the curve of the lips was unbent with a little tremulous play. Winthrop must have been a man of self-command to have stood it; but he looked apparently no more concerned than if old Karen had lifted up her face at him.
"Do you know," she said, and the moved line of the lips might plainly be seen, — "you are making it the more hard for me to learn your lesson, even in the very giving it me?"
"What shall I do?"
Elizabeth hesitated, and conquered herself.
"I guess you needn't do anything," she said half laughing.
"I'll try and do my part."
There was a little answer of the face then, that sent
Elizabeth's eyes to the ground.
"What do you mean by these words?" she said looking at them again.
"I don't mean anything. I simply give them to you."
"Yes, and I might see an old musket standing round the house; but if you take it up and present it at me, it is fair to ask, what you mean?"
"It is not an old musket, to begin with," said Winthrop laughing; "and if it goes off, it will shoot you through the heart."
"You have the advantage of me entirely, this morning!" said Elizabeth. "I give up. I hope the next time you have the pleasure of seeing me, I shall be myself."
"I hope so. I intend to keep my identity. Now as that stage- coach will not come till you get half over the bay —"
And a few minutes thereafter, the little boat was skimming back for the point of Shahweetah, though not quite so swiftly as it had come. But Elizabeth was not a mean oarsman; and in good time she got home, and moored the Merry-go-round in its place.
She was walking up to the house then, in very happy mood, one hand depending musingly at either string of her sunbonnet, when she was met by her cousin.
"Well," said Rose, — "have you been out in the woods all this while?"
"No."
"I suppose it's all settled between you and Mr. Landholm?"
Elizabeth stood an instant, with hands depending as aforesaid, and then with a little inclination of her person, somewhat stately and more graceful, gave Rose to understand, that she had no contradiction to make to this insinuation.
"Is it!" said Rose. "Did he come up for that?"
"I suppose you know what he came for better than I do."
"Did you know I wrote a letter to him?"
"I guessed it afterwards. Rose!" — said Elizabeth suddenly, "there was nothing but about Karen in it?"
"Nothing in the world!" said Rose quickly. "What should there be?"
"What did you write for?"
"I was frightened to death, and I wanted to see somebody; and
I knew you wouldn't send for him. Wasn't it good I did! —"
Rose clapped her hands. The colour in Elizabeth's face was gradually getting brilliant. She passed on.
"And now you' ll live in Mannahatta?"
Elizabeth did not answer.
"And will you send for old Mr. Landholm to come back and take care of this place again?"
"Hush, Rose! — Mr. Landholm will do what he pleases."
"You don't please about it, I suppose?"
"Yes I do, Rose, — not to talk at all on the subject!"
THE END.
PRINTED BY BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ.
Typographical errors silently corrected: