We shall occupy this chapter, also, with the continuation of the
narrative of the occurrences affecting Fanny, previous to the arrival
of the two young gentlemen at the Inn in the mail-stage, and
then proceed in order with our story. Gardner Sears while waiting
the appearance of Tony Taft, slowly paced his room in
thought, weighing in his mind all the difficulties, in which his romantic
interest in the pretty orphan of the Inn might involve
him; and overthrowing every objection from propriety and caution,
with a recurrance in memory to her beautiful face, as it was
upturned to his, in grateful, trembling acknowledgment for the
trifling service he had rendered her. This young gentleman was
by no means naturally susceptible or impressible touching female
beauty. He was an only son, and descended from a very old and
dignified colonial family, one of the founder's, of which on his
mother's side, having been Lieutenant or Vice-Governor under the
crown. His father was a venerable gentleman, and physician of
the Old School, who had long since retired from active life, and
resided in a handsome country house a few miles north of Hillside.
Gardner had been three years before graduated, with a distinguished
honor at Harvard University, and though heir expectant
to an independent estate, had followed the judicious council
of his father, and entered upon the study of the profession which
had been in his family for several generations, a sort of heir-loom.
He was now on his way to Boston, where he intended remaining
until the third course of medical lectures commenced, an attendance
upon which would complete his medical studies. In character
he was a young gentleman of unblemished morals, and with
a mind so sensitively pure, that it would instinctively shrink at
any temptation to immorality of thought or action. His intellect
was of a high order, and his habits were studious and contemplative.
He was a passionate lover of nature, and worshipper of
the beautiful and the sublime. He shunned society, not from any
misanthropic feeling, but because he found more gratification in
books or in nature, than in conversation. He had reached the age
of twenty five, without showing preference for any female, or indicating
any partiality for their society; yet, in his soul, he
was the adorer of images of femenine beauty which he was ever
creating, and it was because the reality around him, never came
sufficiently near the imaginative, that he withdrew from the one,
to commune with the other. We have all in our youth pictured
to ourselves faces of perfect loveliness. We have revelled in the
ideal, and instinctively sought, with this faultless image of the
beautiful, and the true in our minds as a standard, for its embodiment
in life. Happy is he who at length finds what he seeks;
and, uniting his own beautiful creation, to the creation of God,
confesses realized, the perfection his heart hath yearned after.

Gardner Sears had been surrounded with forms of beauty, and
the witchery of smiles and voices, and eyes of love had upon his
heart no effect. There was in the countenances of his fairest acquaintances,
no answering impress to the seal of that face divine,
which in his creations of the beautiful he had engraven upon his
heart. In vain his excellent and wise mother held out to him the
advantages of early marriage, and named to him the maiden she
thought would make him happiest. His quiet, smiling answer invariably
was, `I have not seen her yet, dear mother.'

The very day before his presence at the Inn, such had been his
reply to her. When his eyes first fell on the face of Fanny, he
felt the blood leap from his heart to his brain, and then go coursing
through his veins like lightning, leaving his cheek pale, and
his head smimming with a sort of dreamy delirium of joy and
doubt. There was, then, a deeper feeling than mere admiration,
that led him, with a throbbing heart, from which a fountain of
happiness that had longed for this moment to gush out, came welling
up, to approach her and tender his services. There was a
deeper feeling, than manifested itself externally, which led him to
speak in her defence, and to seek her history from the barber.
There was a far deeper feeling at his heart, than was visible in his
interview with Tony Taft in the shop, and which led him to forego
his journey, and to address her a note desiring an interview.
This feeling was one of present happiness, mingled with hope and
fear and wonder and gratitude. He had found her; he had seen,
her; he had spoken with her. The ideal of his heart's being had

[figure description] Page 014.[end figure description]

become a reality. The outlines of his creations of the beautiful,
were filled out in the fairest proportions of humanity. His conceptions
of the beautiful, and the true were no longer pictures of
a fanciful imagination, unreal and intangible, but they were truth.

Such were his meditations, when the shuffling steps of the little
barber were heard in the entry, and also his shrill voice, which
was ever their restless accompaniment.

`Its the young Doctor I want to see, Curnel, he what come on
the handsome bay mare.'

`Oh, aye, Tony. He desired to have you sent up to his room.
That's the door at the stair head on the left. But what's the secret?
' inquired the prying host, in a whisper.

`Can't I strap a pair of a gent's razors, Curnel and bring 'em to
him, without a secret being at the bottom,' answered Tony in a
loud tone, which he intended should reach the ears of the young
`Doctor,' and convey to him a favorable impression of his sagacity
and prudence.

`So; you have been a long while, my good friend,' said Gardner
Sears, as Tony entered and closed the door carefully behind
him.

`Them men's noses as could ha' been sooner, when they have
women's wits to circumwent, I should like to have 'teen my thumb
and finger,' said the barber with an important manner.

`Have you been successful?'

`Why, that depends on the result. I gave the note to pretty
Fanny, and she hid it away in her bosom.' Tony then proceeded
to detail his interview with the widow, and the persecution of
Fanny, and the threat touching her hair, to which Gardner Sears
listened with emotion and deep indignation.

`I wouldn't ha' mentioned the hair,' said Tony deprecatingly,
as he saw his angry brow and flashing eye, `but I did'nt see what
would come o'it.'

`You have done your part well, my good fellow, and are to be
commended for your ingenuity. I do not blame you. There are
five dollars. Be discreet and silent. I overheard your reply to
the inquisitive host below, and commend your prudence. Return
to your shop, and if you receive an answer, do not delay in bringing
it to me.'

Tony assured him he would not, and then took his leave.

`Five dollars! that's, let me cypher it out? that't eighty shaves,
without the wear of soap and razors. Clean profit every cent!'
he soliloquised as he left the Inn.

`She may not have an opportunity of conveying me any reply,
and I shall not expect one,' said Gardner Sears, as the door closed
on Tony. `I will be at the place of meeting, and trust to her
meeting me there.'

With this determination, he ordered his horse to be put up, and
took up a volume of Willi's `Pencillings By The Way,' that lay
on his table, to pass away the time, until the hour came to proceed
to the trysting place by the river-side.

It was with a fluttering heart, and strange emotions agitating
ker young bosom, that Fanny left the presence of her mistress and
returned to her work. She paused a moment to bind securely up
her abundant hair, which had so barely escaped the scissors, feeling
that she could not be too grateful to the barber for his interference.
But her heart sunk as she recalled her mistress' words,
that not many days should pass, ere every lock should be cut off.

Tears at her sad lot, forced themselves into her fine eyes, yet
there was a twilight of a sweet hope at her heart, that ever kept
her at such times from giving way to gloom and depression. Her
spirit was naturally buoant, and not even the tyranny of which she
was a victim, could break down her lively temper, or make her
utterly miserable. Her voice was sweet and cheerful, and the
music in her heart would often break out in the richest melody,
as she followed her allotted task; and though many were the punishments
she had received from her cruel task-mistress for singing,
yet still unconsciously she would warble on, and most sweetly
when most sad. Knowing little from books, she studied the
thoughts of her own spirit and grew spiritually wise. Shut
out by her circumstances from enjoying the world in which she
lived (and what was this world? the kitchen of an Inn!) she
found a bright and beautiful, and even happy world in her own
heart, and there she dwelt. She peopled it with beings all good
and lovely, and discoursed with them, upon the sweet intelligences
of the inner heaven, and upon the wonders of things invisible,
save to the introverted eye of the soul. Birds soared and sang in
the serene skies of this better land, and she knew their language
by heart, and her songs were but the echoes of theirs. God, she
found the light of this inner world of her heart; and the revelation
of Himself had been to her in Love; and so she was happy
and ever at peace. The beauty of her character was its artlessness.
Those who live much in their own thoughts, are ever natural.
He who loves the world within, will have the spirit of a
child. The heart is the true world of child-hood!—and blessed
is he who in manhood so loves to remain therein, that he sends
forth no restless dove into the agitated waters of life seeking a
new Earth. Fanny was a simple, pure child to the world; for
her heart had not followed on after the years of her life in their
annual orbit; but, silently moving in its lesser circle, remained a
never-setting star within the pure heaven of her childhood's world.

The note she had so privately received, now filled her thoughts
with strange agitation. The words of the giver that it came from—
the young gentleman who had assisted her, singularly troubled
her. New feelings stirred within. Fear and hope and trembling
joy. Yet fear was strongest. The note had been forced upon her
and instinctively concealed before she could reflect. Reflection
now came. What should she do with it. She felt as if it became
her to return it to the barber without delay. Then she thought of
the young man, of his tones of sympathy; of his deep look of
tender yet respectful admiration; of his noble and generous defence
of her. She trembled and sought in her bosom for the note.
The touch thrilled to her heart, and with blushing timidly she
withdrew her hand, and the half-formed wish, that she knew what it contained, rose in her mind. Fanny was modest and instinctively
shrank from any imprudence that might compromise her
maiden delicacy. She thought and thought, as she pursued her
labor, and the more she thought, the stronger were the arguments
gratitude presented for retaining and examining the note, and the
weaker grew her resolutions to return it unopened. At length the
idea that it would not be generous, to treat thus a stranger who
had spoken so kindly to her, and in her behalf, had risked the
wrath of her mistress, turned the scale in his favor, and she resolved
to take the first opportunity to read the note. Had curiosity
nothing to do with it?

Now that Fanny had come to this resolution, she was impatient
to find a way of carrying her decision into effect. How should
she escape the Argus-eyes of her mistress, which were ever over
her, and measured out and took note of every moment of her time.
For half an hour she could think of nothing but the note hid in
her bosom. She had nearly let the biscuits burn, and had begun
to make tea in the coffee-pot; but fortunately bethought herself
in time to avoid these accidents of absence of mind. At length
tea was ready, and she hoped to get an opportunity to read it
while the widow was at the table. But this chance did not favor
her, and darkness came ere she was able even to look at the outside
of the note, without fear of detection. At length the hour
of retiring to her little chamber over the kitchen came, and she
found herself forced to go to bed, without knowing the contents
of the note. All this difficulty served only to deepen the impression
Gardner Sears had made upon her mind, and was in his favor;
for no young girl could have a young man so long, and under
such circumstances in her thoughts, without insensibly becoming
greatly interested in him. Now she is in her little bed-room
alone and the door is fast, and she will no doubt embrace this opportunity
to see the contents of the note! But here the difficulty
was as great as before! Fanny had never gone to bed with a candle
in her life, and this night afforded no exception to the rule of
her parsimonious mistress. Many had been the hour, in the darkness,
that she had set by her low window looking at the blue skies,
or the stars, or the moon, walking in her brightness and holding
communion with her gentle thoughts. Night and darkness and
solitude, had so become her sisters, and she loved them. At such
times, when all was still, and the village slept silently beneath the
midnight watchers above, she would softly raise her window and
steal out upon a low shed beneath it, which had a broad roof that,
on the garden side, descended within three feet of the ground.
She would by this means reach the dark garden, and then with
rapid feet take her way through it to a shaded lane beyond, which
terminated at the Methodist Chapel. Here a narrow path on one
side, led to a grove by the water, where were three solitary graves.
Between two of them she would kneel, and with strange awe held
communion with the spirits of her father and mother, whom she
had been told lay buried there.

She now closed her door, and sat by the window with the note,
which for hours her wistful heart had been throbbing against, in
her hand. She examined it by the faint star-beams that came in
through the narrow panes, but so imperfect was this light, that
with the closest scrutiny she could not tell whether there was any
address upon the back of it or not How tantalizing! how very
vexing. She did not say as much, but she keenly felt that it was
so. She opened it (carefully, lest the rattle of the paper should
be overheard,) and after close observation, she could detect the
shadowy form of lines. Not all her ingenuity could help her in
discovering the outline of a single word. Yet there words were
written, and addressed to her eye! and by one whom she had
began to feel herself more deeply interested in, than any one she
had ever known in her young existence.

`What would I not give for a light but for a half a minute—`she
said to herself. Perhaps I am doing what I ought not in wishing
to read this—but I must read it now? Joy, joy, there is the first
glimmer of the moon rising on the hilltop—but it will be long after
it rises, on account of the high trees, before its beams will shine
down into my window! I cannot wait! It always shines first on
my `home;' for by this term this interesting orphan always

[figure description] Page 015.[end figure description]

designated the grave of her parents! `I will go there and catch its
first light! There I know I shall do nothing I ought not to, and
there if I feel that I can read this note, I know `tis not wrong for
me to do so.'

With these words spoken in her heart, for her lips moved not,
she listened a moment if all were still in the Inn, and then raising
her window she crept softly out upon the shed and the next moment,
with a noiseless bound, was in the garden. She flitted
through its shady walks, like some spirit of the night. She soon
entered the lane and glided by the side of the hedge till she came to
the stile leading to the little cemetery.

Her `home' was a sweet, secluded spot, with a group of plumepending
elms and solemn pines, overshadowing it. The river
darkly glided with a broken rippling, past, within a few steps of the
graves, which, as she entered the path leading to the spot, were
just catching the first blush of the mellow moonlight. A deep,
funereal repose, a sweet, awful calm, as if nature mourned for the
dead, and offered her sympathy to the living, reigned there.

Fanny knelt by the graves of her parents with her head bowed
over the white marble slab, and breathed her childhood's prayer for
their blessing and protection. Then, still on her knees, she drew
forth the note and with trembling fingers held it so that the rising
moon should fall upon it. With a bounding heart she read line
after line, to its end.

`No, no! I cannot meet him,' she said in a low, hesitating tone,
`How kind his words are—he must be good, and he is my friend—
no I dare not—It is, yet, so sweet to know there is one who cares
for me! I dare not for he is a stranger! Yet what shall I do? my
lot is dreadful! I cannot, nay I am firmly resolved not to remain
longer where I am so unhappy! Oh, I do want a friend to council
with, some one in whom I can confide!'

`And here, sweet girl, dear gentle Fanny, you have one in me!'
said a voice by her side—a voice that she well knew, and trembled,
but with joy, to listen to—She did not start at the sudden surprise—
she did not fly—she was silent and agitated with the unexpected
presence of the one occupying her thought, though from
his note, she half-expected him to be near her, in the distant path.

`You do not speak! forgive me, if I have intruded too boldly
upon your sacred seclusion here!' he said in a tone of deep feeling
that soothed her, while it made her heart flutter with, she knew
not what, delight. `Seeing you walk hither, I followed you,
hoping you had been so generous as to comply with my wish, and
had come to meet me!'

`No, no!' she said energetically; yet instantly her voice fell as
she recollected that she came there to read his note; `I did not
read your note until this moment. But sir I will not deceive you!'
she said frankly; for she knew not what deception was! `I had
no opportunity of learning the contents of the note in the house,
and I came hither by my mother's grave to read it by moonlight.'

This answer pleased him much. He was glad in his heart that
she had not come purposely to meet him—`Her maiden delicacy
hath not been compromised the shadow of a shade,' he thought to
himself. `So that I see you for a moment, I am too happy to ask
for what I am indebted for your sweet presence.'

`I don't know, sir, that I ought at this hour, and under such circumstances
to remain here,' she said in an attitude preparatory to
a flight.

`Nay--here by your parents' graves, you are safe from every
evil design, were I evil. Their presence, though they are dead, is
your protection; and believe it to be so, while I pray you to hear
me one moment, sweet girl!'

The passion and touching eloquence of his words arrested her.
Confidence, trusting and child-like, took possession of her bosom,
and without fear she stood and waited for him to speak. He approached
and gently took her hand. She withdrew it not, for the
moonlight fell clear and pure upon his fine countenance and she
saw truth and sincerity written there.

`Good and gentle Fanny---for good and gentle I knew thou art---
he who addresses you, though a stranger, believe to be your friend,
your brother, if that title be dearer to you! I know your history
and it has deeply interested my heart! I have sought this interview
with you to offer you my aid in any way in my power! you are
very dear to me, for I have long loved you---you withdraw your
hand! hear me still---your image, a face like thine, has ever filled
my happy dreams. I knew not that it belonged to earth till to day
I beheld you! you were its personification---its sweet humanity---
From that moment my fate became involved and intimately united
with your own! I felt that henceforth you were to be to me life and
happiness. Nay---move not away! Let not my ardent language
offend you! I would tell you all I feel frankly and openly. Under
the influence of my feelings I wrote to you. We have now met
and, sweet child, you hold my destiny in your hand!'

Fanny listened bewildered---She had never before been addressed
in language at all like this; yet it found and set vibrating a
harp of a thousand chords in her young bosom. She was silent
for she knew not what to say. She stood by him with downcast
eyes and heaving vesture. Never had such gentle words fallen
upon her ear. They opened the sealed fountain of her heart, and
moved, like the wind upon rippling waters, the fathomless sea of
love there, that the zephyrs of affection had not breathed over for
years. The thought was sweet to her soul that she was an object
of any one's regard, and regard so tender and gentle,so inviting confidence,
so full of sympathy and respect. Yet she answered becomingly.

`You are a stranger, sir, though a very kind one, and I am unknown
to you also! a poor orphan I am, and my condition is that
of a menial. Even did I know you to be good and humble---I am
far too humble for you to interest yourself in me. You have my
heart's deep gratitude, sir!'

`Every word you speak, more deeply enlists my feelings---nay
my heart! I know your humble situation---but I also believe you
to belong by nature to a higher sphere---I offer you my services---
I am rich---I am free to do what I will. The woman you are with
has, by her tyranny, forfeited all title to any consideration. You
are yet young and happiness is before you if you will accept it. If
you will leave her, my mother, for I have a kind generous mother,
will become a mother to you. If you desire to be educated (for
pure as your language is and graceful as I know your mind to be,)
you cannot have enjoyed the advantages you are entitled to! you
shall have that privilege. I can then be near you and you can know
me better, and then instead of regarding me as now, as a stranger,
you may look upon me as your friend.' Perhaps he would have
added a dearer title; but his own delicacy forbade, and he feared
to offend her---for she seemed all the while like a timid fawn, half
flying yet lingering still! If he had followed the impulse of his
feeling he would have declared his passion for her; but there was
a certain prudence which tempered his romantic enthusiasm, and
prevented him from doing what, possibly, he might afterwards see
reason to regret. His object was to get her beneath his mother's
roof, have her thoroughly educated and silently study the character
of her mind. She seemed to him as he observed her, like pure,
yet unshaped gold, which he should find an untold pleasure in
moulding after the image of his own intellectual and moral
being.

`I look upon you as my friend already, sir,' she said in a voice
that went to his heart; `I never had a friend, and 'tis sweet to
know that we are loved.'

He knew she did not mean by this word what it usually meant,
but rather, regard. He was gratified by the ingenuousness which
so unaffectedly made use of an expression in itself so full of meaning.
He listened enraptured to her, as she continued, to his surprise,
to speak a few sentences more of the deepest heart-feeling,
and to tell him how her soul had yearned ever after a kindred soul.
`It is painful,' she said, `to suppress and hush within the being
all its uprising thoughts. As rain falls to the earth, and as clouds
seek the sun, so do our thoughts seek another mind to pour themselves
into. I have sometimes felt as if my heart would burst with
its fullness of feeling, and then I would come here and disburthen
it by the graves of my father and mother. You will think it strange
in me to talk so, but I sometimes think I am like some spirit, I
have imagined that has a body and the earth for its home, who
without ever seeing a book or holding communion with men, lives
in the outer world in an inner world of his own thoughts---making
a sort of mind-world between the earth he is on, and the heaven
from which he came! I feel like such a spirit, always in the night,
when I am alone, here, and think about myself. But you will
think me foolish sir; but I know not how to talk in any other way.'

`No, I could listen to you forever, lovely one?' he said earnestly
`This is all new and beautiful to me!' and she continued in a
low, musical voice like one musing, while he listened with strange
delight;

`I have thought at times, I never had a mother of earth, though
they tell me she lies here. I have a fanciful life and it is this.
I seem to remember a time which I feel is my birth-morning. I
see a beautiful hill all golden with buttercups---and this you must
know, is my favourite flower---and I hear voices, and a hymn, and
soft, unearthy music floating in the air, and then I find myself
borne slowly along on wings, and my first sensation is happiness.
That is my birth, and the sweet music I know came from the voice
of my spirit-mother, in the fulness of her glandness! I sometimes
think I have been a bird and I love to look upon the birds as they
sing and to think I am their sister. It is a sweet wild world of
harmony and love in which I have lived, sir.'

`Strange, unaccountable creature!' said the young man, who had
listened to her low musical tones, and her singular language with
wonder and delight; and as he turned and gazed upon her thoughtful
spiritual face in the moonlight, he asked himself if he were
not in the presence of such a being as she had been describing
rather than in that of a mortal. `And what,' thought he, `are we,
any of us, but mysterious, supernatural spirits coming from an unseen
world, to be embodied here for awhile, and then depart again!
This beauteous being, finding this world cold and unfeeling, has
returned within herself, and so has been more eternal than material!
she has her spiritual character unalloyed! In truth it is a

[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]

spirit scene tainted with the earth it inhabits that I am listening
to! How wildly beautiful is her mind! How graceful the childish
artlessness of her thoughts! I could adore her for that pretty idea---
the love for the neglected buttercup! she is a study for a pure
minded man, and her spiritual presence thus breathing out from
her heaven within, will surely make me pure!'

`Are you never unhappy?' he asked. `I would know,' he added
with a smile, `if angels can be unhappy even on earth, if they
have a heaven within to retreat into?'

`You smile, sir,' she said quietly, `because you think me fanciful.
But this fancy is the atmosphere in which, like a free bird, I
fly from the arrows of the bad, and seek my spirit-sky. I shed
tears sometimes when I am hardly treated, but when I found that
all unhappiness was in the thought, I early learned to teach them
to fly from the danger into my inner world. So I early had the
secret of happiness, and though I wept outwardly it was ever sunshine
within.'

`There is deep wisdom to be gathered from your gentle and
strange words, Fanny, for so let me address you.'

`I have no other name,' she answered sadly `The secret of my
name sleeps here! and she pointed impressively to the graves.
`Sometimes I feel a feverish desire---a wish almost amounting to
nervousness to know who my parents were; but it soon passes
away as my unavailing tears dry on my cheek, and I fly away to
the happy scenes in the world of my own heart, and am happy
again?'

`With such a nature as yours, dear Fanny, this world---mankind---
the universe all might be annihilated and you would be a universe,
a heaven-world in yourself! I know not what to make of
you. With so much wisdom and truth and gravity, yet so fanciful---nay
that is not the term! I wish I had some better one to express
what I mean.

`Dreamy and creative! and living and speaking and acting, as
if the unreal creations were the true world,' she answered beautifully.
`Is not this my character?'

`That is what I mean. You have described yourself truly. But
I cannot explain how so much good sense as you possess; such
just judgment of things, as you evince, can exist with your strange,
gravely told, but pretty story of your not having a mother of earth,
but was born on a mound of golden buttercups.'

`No---I must have had a mother of earth also,' she said in a
thoughtful and earnest voice, which, with the words that she uttered,
more than ever perplexed him, and made him resolve to give
himself up wholly to the study of so strange and unnatural (yet
childishly natural and therefore pure nature) a character as she
presented to his contemplation.' The mother of the golden hill of
buttercups was my spirit's mother and I shall always be her child
as I am now. Death never will take her from me. This mother
`and she looked at the grave, was my human natures' mother!'

`Have we all a spiritual mother, Fanny?' he asked interested
in thoughts, so new and so beautifully expressed, with a manner
as if it were the commonest thing in the world to talk thus.

`Yes---I think so. She is a mother who is all good. She guides
us and warns us and keeps us from evil till we die. If we do wrong
she is grieved and her grief makes us unhappy, when we hear her
voice in our hearts. `Have you not felt that you have grieved
your spirits' mother?'

`Singular being! you mean conscience.'

`I have given her no name but spirit-mother.'

`Fanny, you are not fitted for the sphere you are placed in! you
must leave and go to my mother's---my earth-mother's home.' He
did not smile as he repeated this---for her deep spiritual earnestness
had made an impression upon his soul. He had, himself, lived
enough in the world of his own highly imaginative mind, to know
how fascinating such a life is; and he could easily conceive how a
young and intellectual creature like Fanny, with a gentle, but
strongly poetical fancy, when the world around her offered her no
love, could teach her thoughts to live in the inner and happier
world of her two-fold being, till it came to be the real life, and
as such, freely discourse of it! Beautiful as this introverted state of
being and enjoyment, was to witness; delightful as it was to listen to
her mellow dreamy tones, as to a voice from the invisible world he
felt that so sweet a person belonged as much to earth as heaven, and
that this earth had only to be made lovely and attractive by means
of Friendship, Truth and Love to her heart to cause her to find enjoyment
in the external world as comprehensive and as capable of
filling her soul as the creations of her own.

`I cannot go now! I will wait and bear patiently a little longer
the lot in which my fate has been cast. `Perhaps,' and she thought
of her beautiful tresses and the menace of her mistress, `perhaps
the time may come when I shall need your friendship.'

In vain he plead with her to avail herself now of it. She replied
that she could not be ungrateful to the person who had protected
her youth, even though she was cruel. `It is her nature to be
stern and I forgive her,' she said peacefully. `I have doubtless,
been careless and often given her cause for anger!'

`You go beyond true charity, Fanny.'

`I owe her much—I owe her good husband's memory much—
and cannot leave her without some grave cause. If one that I fear
should occur—'

`Then you will call upon me, dear Fanny?'

`Yes—for I feel a confidence and truth in you, I should do violence
to the truth of my own nature not to confess. But I cannot,
in any alternative, leave with you alone!'

`No—my mother and yours shall come with me,' he said quickly,
at once appreciating her hesitating words and blushing manner.

`Then, if I am compelled to seek another home, it shall be as you
wish—for I answer you frankly. I feel happier for this interview,
for I know that I am not quite alone in the living world of people!
I must go now, sir!'

`A line given to the barber, Mr. Taft, who is my friend, will
reach me either at Boston or at my father's, ten miles hence, on
the same day. He will be instructed to forward it. I cannot endure
leaving you in the Inn again, even for an hour; but the same
Providence that hath guarded you, will still watch over you. I
shall not, however, wait for any untoward event to occur, before
seeing you again. I shall send my dear mother to you, and see if
her eloquence can't prevail upon you. Mrs. Power will be easily
satisfied. Will you promise to write me if anything unpleasant
occurs?'

`I do. It is the only way in which I can express my gratitude
for your interest in me.'

`Now, good night and may you be happy for the sweet joy and
hope you have poured, like holy oil, upon my heart.'

With these words of parting she left him standing gazing with
wonder and strange happiness at his heart, after her receding
figure, as it disappeared in the shadows of the path beyond the
chapel.