friends. He was present all the time and he answered their inquiries
as usual; but his thoughts were very far distant, and somehow or
other, they perpetually mingled up the image of the young traveller,
whom he too had seen, with that of the proud woman, whom he was
not yet sure that he unprofitably worshipped.






CHAPTER IV.

SIMPLICITY AND THE SERPENT.





The mirth and music of Charlemont were enjoyed by others, but not
by Margaret Cooper. The resolution not to share in the pleasures
of the young around her, which she showed to her rustic lover, was
a resolution firmly persevered in throughout the long summer which
followed. Her wayward mood shut out from her contemplation the only
sunshine of the place; and her heart, brooding over the remote,
if not the impossible, denied itself those joys which were equally
available and nigh. Her lonesome walks became longer in the forests,
and later each evening grew the hour of her return to the village.
Her solitude daily increased, as the youth, who really loved her
with all the ardency of a first passion, and who regarded her at