He looked at her long. The beautiful color was all faded out of the
yellow-white face; the sweet full lips were set and thin; the closed
blue eyes sunken in dark hollows; the yellow hair showed a line of
gray at the edge of her old woman's cap, and thin gray curls lay
against the hollow cheeks. But old Thomas Merriam drew a long breath
when he looked at her. It was like a gasp of admiration and wonder; a
strange rapture came into his dim eyes; his lips moved as if he
whispered to her, but young Evelina could not hear a sound. She
watched him, half frightened, but finally he turned to her. "I 'ain't
seen her--fairly," said he, hoarsely--"I 'ain't seen her, savin' a
glimpse of her at the window, for over forty year, and she 'ain't
changed, not a look. I'd have known her anywheres. She's the same as
she was when she was a girl. It's wonderful--wonderful!"

Young Evelina shrank a little. "We think she looks natural," she
said, hesitatingly.

"She looks jest as she did when she was a girl and used to come into
the meetin'-house. She _is_ jest the same," the old man repeated, in
his eager, hoarse voice. Then he bent over the coffin, and his lips
moved again. Young Evelina would have called Mrs. Loomis, for she was
frightened, had he not been Thomas's father, and had it not been for
her vague feeling that there might be some old story to explain this
which she had never heard. "Maybe he was in love with poor Cousin
Evelina, as Thomas is with me," thought young Evelina, using her own
leaping-pole of love to land straight at the truth. But she never
told her surmise to any one except Thomas, and that was long
afterwards, when the old man was dead. Now she watched him with her
blue dilated eyes. But soon he turned away from the coffin and made
his way straight out of the room, without a word. Evelina followed