He writhed under his own pain alone, and his duty hugged him hard,
like the iron maiden of the old tortures, but he would not yield.

As for Evelina, when she got his letter, and had read it through, she
sat still and white for a long time, and did not seem to hear when
old Sarah Judd spoke to her. But at last she rose and went to her
chamber, and knelt down, and prayed for a long time; and then she
went out in the garden and cut all the most beautiful flowers, and
tied them in wreaths and bouquets, and carried them out to the north
side of the house, where her cousin Evelina was buried, and covered
her grave with them. And then she knelt down there, and hid her face
among them, and said, in a low voice, as if in a listening ear, "I
pray you, Cousin Evelina, forgive me for what I am about to do."

And then she returned to the house, and sat at her needlework as
usual; but the old woman kept looking at her, and asking if she were
sick, for there was a strange look in her face.

She and old Sarah Judd had always their tea at five o'clock, and put
the candles out at nine, and this night they did as they were wont.
But at one o'clock in the morning young Evelina stole softly down the
stairs with her lighted candle, and passed through into the kitchen;
and a half-hour after she came forth into the garden, which lay in
full moonlight, and she had in her hand a steaming teakettle, and she
passed around among the shrubs and watered them, and a white cloud of
steam rose around them. Back and forth she went to the kitchen; for
she had heated the great copper wash-kettle full of water; and she
watered all the shrubs in the garden, moving amid curling white
wreaths of steam, until the water was gone. And then she set to work
and tore up by the roots with her little hands and trampled with her