garden, as poor Cousin Evelina did before her, even if she has a fine
house to live in and a goodly sum in the bank. She looks pindling
enough lately. I'll warrant she has lost a good ten pound since poor
Evelina was laid away, and--"

But Thomas Merriam cut her short. "I see no profit in discussing
matters which do not concern us," said he, and only his ministerial
estate saved him from the charge of impertinence.

As it was, Martha Loomis colored high. "I'll warrant he'll look out
which side his bread is buttered on; ministers always do," she said
to her daughters after he had gone. She never dreamed how her talk
had cut him to the heart.

Had he not seen more plainly than any one else, Sunday after Sunday,
when he glanced down at her once or twice cautiously from his pulpit,
how weary-looking and thin she was growing? And her bright color was
wellnigh gone, and there were pitiful downward lines at the corners
of her sweet mouth. Poor young Evelina was fading like one of her own
flowers, as if some celestial gardener had failed in his care of her.
And Thomas saw it, and in his heart of hearts he knew the reason, and
yet he would not yield. Not once had he entered the old Squire's
house since he attended the dead Evelina's funeral, and stood praying
and eulogizing, with her coffin between him and the living Evelina,
with her pale face shrouded in black bombazine. He had never spoken
to her since, nor entered the house; but he had written her a letter,
in which all the fierce passion and anguish of his heart was cramped
and held down by formal words and phrases, and poor young Evelina did
not see beneath them. When her lover wrote her that he felt it
inconsistent with his Christian duty and the higher aims of his