When Stephen White saw his new tenants' first preparations for moving into
his house, he was conscious of a strangely mingled feeling, half
irritation, and half delight. Four weeks had passed since the unlucky
evening on which he had taken Mercy to his mother's room, and he had not
seen her face again. He had called at the hotel twice, but had found only
Mrs. Carr at home. Mercy had sent a messenger with only a verbal message,
when she wished the key of the house.

She had an undefined feeling that she would not come into any relation
with Stephen White, if it could be avoided. She was heartily glad that she
had not been in the house when he called. And yet, had she been in the
habit of watching her own mental states, she would have discovered that
Stephen White was very much in her thoughts; that she had come to
wondering why she never met him in her walks; and, what was still more
significant, to mistaking other men for him, at a distance. This is one of
the oddest tricks of a brain preoccupied with the image of one human
being. One would think that it would make the eye clearer-sighted,
well-nigh infallible, in the recognition of the loved form. Not at all.
Waiting for her lover to appear, a woman will stand wearily watching at a
window, and think fifty times in sixty minutes that she sees him coming.
Tall men, short men, dark men, light men; men with Spanish cloaks, and men
in surtouts,--all wear, at a little distance, a tantalizing likeness to
the one whom they in no wise resemble.

After such a watching as this, the very eye becomes disordered, as after
looking at a bright color it sees a spectrum of a totally different tint;
and, when the long looked-for person appears, he himself looks unnatural
at first, and strange. How well many women know this curious fact in