Cynthia's eyes were of that peculiar gray which, lighted by love or
anger, once seen, are never forgotten. One hand was on the dashboard of
the cutter, the other had seized the seat. Her voice was steady, and the
three words she spoke struck Miss Hopkins with startling effect.

Miss Hopkins's breath was literally taken away, and for once she found no
retort. Let it be said for her that this was a new experience with a new
creature. A demure country girl turn into a wildcat before her very eyes!
Perhaps it was as well for both that the door of the house opened and the
Honorable Alva interrupted their talk, and without so much as a glance at
Cynthia he got hurriedly into the sleigh and drove off. When Cynthia
turned, the points of color still high in her cheeks and the light still
ablaze in her eyes, she surprised Jethro gazing at her from the porch,
and some sorrow she felt rather than beheld stopped the confession on her
lips. It would be unworthy of her even to repeat such slander, and the
color surged again into her face for very shame of her anger. Cassandra
Hopkins had not been worthy of it.

Jethro did not speak, but slipped his hand into hers, and thus they stood
for a long time gazing at the snow fields between the pines on the
heights of Coniston.

The next summer, was the first which the painter--pioneer of summer
visitors there--spent at Coniston. He was an unsuccessful painter, who
became, by a process which he himself does not to-day completely
understand, a successful writer of novels. As a character, however, he
himself confesses his inadequacy, and the chief interest in him for the
readers of this narrative is that he fell deeply in love with Cynthia
Wetherell at nineteen. It is fair to mention in passing that other young