really practical. How otherwise could she trifle with such a situation?

It must be confessed that that day and the next she did trifle with it.
She gave herself up to a grave and delicious languor that seemed to flow
from shadow and silence and permeate her entire being. She passed hours
in a thoughtful repose of mind and spirit that seemed to fall like balm
from those steadfast guardians, and distill their gentle ether in her
soul; or breathed into her listening ear immunity from the forgotten
past, and security for the present. If there was no dream of the future
in this calm, even recurrence of placid existence, so much the better.
The simple details of each succeeding day, the quaint housekeeping, the
brief companionship and coming and going of her young host--himself
at best a crystallized personification of the sedate and hospitable
woods--satisfied her feeble cravings. She no longer regretted the
inferior position that her fears had obliged her to take the first night
she came; she began to look up to this young man--so much younger than
herself--without knowing what it meant; it was not until she found
that this attitude did not detract from his picturesqueness that
she discovered herself seeking for reasons to degrade him from this
seductive eminence.

A week had elapsed with little change. On two days he had been absent
all day, returning only in time to sup in the hollow tree, which,
thanks to the final removal of the dead bear from its vicinity, was now
considered a safer retreat than the exposed camp-fire. On the first of
these occasions she received him with some preoccupation, paying but
little heed to the scant gossip he brought from Indian Spring, and
retiring early under the plea of fatigue, that he might seek his own
distant camp-fire, which, thanks to her stronger nerves and regained
courage, she no longer required so near. On the second occasion, he