after his wife's death, except to carry Evelina to and from school.
She and the Squire also took long walks, but they never exchanged
aught but the merest civilities of good-days and nods with the
neighbors whom they met, unless indeed the Squire had some matter of
business to discuss. Then Evelina stood aside and waited, her fair
face drooping gravely aloof. She was very pretty, with a gentle
high-bred prettiness that impressed the village folk, although they
looked at it somewhat askance.

Evelina's figure was tall, and had a fine slenderness; her silken
skirts hung straight from the narrow silk ribbon that girt her slim
waist; there was a languidly graceful bend in her long white throat;
her long delicate hands hung inertly at her sides among her skirt
folds, and were never seen to clasp anything; her softly clustering
fair curls hung over her thin blooming cheeks, and her face could
scarce be seen, unless, as she seldom did, she turned and looked full
upon one. Then her dark blue eyes, with a little nervous frown
between them, shone out radiantly; her thin lips showed a warm red,
and her beauty startled one.

Everybody wondered why she did not have a lover, why some fine young
man had not been smitten by her while she had been away at school.
They did not know that the school had been situated in another little
village, the counterpart of the one in which she had been born,
wherein a fitting mate for a bird of her feather could hardly be
found. The simple young men of the country-side were at once
attracted and intimidated by her. They cast fond sly glances across
the meeting-house at her lovely face, but they were confused before
her when they jostled her in the doorway and the rose and lavender
scent of her lady garments came in their faces. Not one of them dared