eyebrows were waning. He had a settled patience of look which would have
been a sadness, if there had not been mixed with it an air of resolute
cheerfulness. I am not sure that this kept it from being sad, either.

Miss Bentley, on her part, was no longer the young girl she was when we
met on the _Corinthian_. She must then have been about twenty, and she
was now twenty-six, but she looked thirty. Dark people show their age
early, and she showed hers in cheeks that grew thinner if not paler, and
in a purple shadow under her fine eyes. The parting of her black hair
was wider than it once was, and she wore it smooth in apparent disdain
of those arts of fluffing and fringing which give an air of vivacity, if
not of youth. I should say she had always been a serious girl, and now
she showed the effect of a life that could not have been gay for any
one.

The lovers promised themselves, as we knew, that Mrs. Bentley would
relent, and abandon what was more like a whimsical caprice than a
settled wish. But as time wore on, and she gave no sign of changing, I
have wondered whether some change did not come upon them, which affected
them towards each other without affecting their constancy. I fancied
their youthful passion taking on the sad color of patience, and
contenting itself more and more with such friendly companionship as
their fate afforded; it became, without marriage, that affectionate
comradery which wedded love passes into with the lapse of as many years
as they had been plighted. "What," I once suggested to my wife, in a
very darkling mood--"what if they should gradually grow apart, and end
in rejoicing that they had never been allowed to join their lives?
Wouldn't that be rather Hawthornesque?"

"It wouldn't be true," said Mrs. March, "and I don't see why you should