his views, could there be danger to her. His acquaintance with the widow, which had been kept up by an occasional brief visit, and the present condition of the latter's health, gave him all the opportunity he needed. The Catawba grapes were already ripening on the trellises at Lakeside, and he would take the earliest bunches to the widow's cottage.

The impression, in Ptolemy society, of a strong antagonism between himself and Hannah Thurston, was very general. Even Mrs. Waldo, whose opportunities of seeing both were best of all, fancied that their more cordial demeanor towards each other, in their later interviews, was only a tacitly understood armistice. Woodbury was aware of this impression, and determined not to contradict it for the present.

Thus, tormented from without and within, impelled by an outcry of his nature that would not be silenced, without consciousness of love, he took the first step, knowing that it might lead him to love a woman whose ideas were repugnant to all his dreams of marriage and of domestic peace.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

IN WHICH HANNAH THURSTON, ALSO, HAS HER TROUBLES.

WHEN Woodbury made his first appearance at the cottage, the Widow Thurston, who had not seen him since his return from the Lakes, frankly expressed her pleasure in his society. It was one of her favorable days, and she was sitting in her well-cushioned rocking-chair, with her feet upon a stool. She had grown frightfully thin and pale during the summer, but the lines of physical pain had almost entirely passed away from her face. Her expression denoted great weakness and languor. The calm, resigned spirit which reigned in her eyes was only troubled, at times, when they rested on her daughter. She had concealed from the latter, as much as possible, the swiftness with which her vital force was diminishing, lest she should increase the care and anxiety which was beginning to tell upon her health. She knew that the end was not far off: she could measure its approach, and she acknowledged in her heart how welcome it would be, but for her daughter's sake. "It's very kind of thee to come, Friend Woodbury," said she. "I've been expecting thee before."

"I ought to have come sooner," said he, "but there have been changes at Lakeside."

"Yes, I know. The two guests that will not be kept out have come to thy home, as they come to the homes of others. We must be ready for either. The Lord sends them both."

"Yes," said Woodbury, with a sigh, "but one of them is long in coming to me." The sweet serenity and truth of the old woman's words evoked a true reply. All that she said came from a heart too sincere for disguise, and spoke to his

undisguised self. There would have been something approaching to sacrilege in an equivocal answer.

She looked at him with a sad, serious inquiry in her glance. "I see thee's not hasty to open thy doors," she said, at last," and it's well. There's always a blessing in store for them that wait. I pray that it may come to thee in the Lord's good time."

She

"Amen!" he exclaimed, earnestly. An irresistible impulse, the next moment, led him to look at Hannah Thurston. was setting in order the plants on the little flower-stand before the window, and her face was turned away from him, but there was an indefinable intentness in her attitude which told him that no word had escaped her ears.

Presently she seated herself, and took part in the conversation, which turned mainly upon Bute and his wife. The light from the south window fell upon her face, and Woodbury noticed that it had grown somewhat thinner and wore a weary, anxious expression. A pale violet shade had settled under the dark-gray eyes and the long lashes drooped their fringes. No latent defiance lurked in her features: her manner was grave, almost to sadness, and in her voice there was a gentle languor, like that which follows mental exhaustion.

In all their previous interviews, Woodbury had never been able entirely to banish from his mind the consciousness of her exceptional position, as a woman. It had tinged, without his having suspected the fact, his demeanor towards her. Something of the asserted independence of man to man had modified the deferential gentleness of man to woman. She had, perhaps, felt this without being able to define it, for, though he had extorted her profound respect he had awakened in her a disposition scarcely warmer than she gave to abstract qualities. Now, however, she presented herself to him under a different aspect. He forgot her masculine aspirations, seeing in her only the faithful, anxious daughter, over whom the shadow of her approaching loss deepened from day to day. The former chill of his presence did not return, but in its place

a subtle warmth seemed to radiate from him. Before, his words had excited her intellect: now, they addressed them. selves to her feelings. As the conversation advanced, she recovered her usual animation, yet still preserved the purely feminine character which he had addressed in her. The positions which they had previously occupied were temporarily forgotten, and at parting each vaguely felt the existence of unsuspected qualities in the other.

During this first visit, Hannah Thurston indulged without reserve, in the satisfaction which it gave to her. She always found it far more agreeable to like than to dislike. Woodbury's lack of that enthusiasm which in her soul was an ever burning and mounting fire-his cold, dispassionate power of judgment-his tolerance of what she considered perverted habits of the most reprehensible character, and his indifference to those wants and wrongs of the race which continually appealed to the Reformer's aid, had at first given her the impression that the basis of his character was hard and selfish. She had since modified this view, granting him the high attributes of truth and charity; she had witnessed the manifestation of his physical and moral courage; but his individuality still preserved a cold, statuesque beauty. His mastery over himself, she supposed, extended to his intellectual passions and his affections. He would only be swayed by them so far as seemed to him rational and convenient.

His words to her mother recalled to her mind, she knew not why, the description of her own father's death. It was possible that an equal capacity for passion might here again be hidden under a cold, immovable manner. She had sounded, tolerably well, the natures of the men of whom she had seen most, during the past six or eight years, ard had found that their own unreserved protestations of feeling were the measure of their capacity to feel. There was no necessity, indeed, to throw a plummet into their streams, for they had egotistically set up their own Nilometers, and the depth of the current was indicated at the surface. She began to suspect, now, that

she had been mistaken in judging Woodbury by the same test. The thought, welcome as it was from a broad, humane point of view, nevertheless almost involved a personal humiliation. Her strong sense of justice commanded her to rectify the mis take, while her recognition of it weakened her faith in her self.

In a few days Woodbury came again, and as before, on an errand of kindness to her mother. She saw that his visits gave pleasure to the latter, and for that reason alone it was her duty to desire them, but on this occasion she detected an independent pleasure of her own at his appearance. A certain friendly familiarity seemed to be already established between them. She had been drawn into it, she scarcely knew how, and could not now withdraw, yet the consciousness of it began to agitate her in a singular way. A new power came from Woodbury's presence, surrounded and assailed her. It was not the chill of his unexcitable intellect, stinging her into a half-indignant resistance. It was a warm, seductive, indefinable magnetism, which inspired her with a feeling very much like terror. Its weight lay upon her for hours after he had gone. Whatever it was, its source, she feared, must lie in herself; he seemed utterly unconscious of any design to produce a particular impression upon her. His manner was as frank and natural as ever he conversed about the books which he or she had recently read, or on subjects of general interest, addressing much of his discourse to her mother rather than herself. She noticed, indeed, that he made no reference to the one question on which they differed so radically; but a little reflection showed her that he had in no former case commenced the discussion, nor had he ever been inclined to prolong it when started.

Their talk turned for a while on the poets. Hannah Thurston had but slight acquaintance with Tennyson, who was Woodbury's favorite among living English authors, and he promised to bring her the book. He repeated the stanzas descriptive of Jephtha's Daughter, in the "Dream of Fair