“Oh, Mrs. Philbrick!  Mrs. Philbrick! do not walk so fast.  I am trying to overtake you.”

Feeling as guilty as a child detected in some forbidden spot, Mercy stood still, vainly hoping her black veil was thick enough to hide her red eyes; vainly trying to regain her composure enough to speak in her natural voice, and smile her usual smile.  Vainly, indeed!  What crape could blind a lover’s eyes, or what forced tone deceive a lover’s ears?

At his first sight of her face, Stephen started; at the first sound of her voice, he stood still, and exclaimed,—­

“Mrs. Philbrick, you have been crying!” There was no gainsaying it, even if Mercy had not been too honest to make the attempt.  She looked up mischievously at him, and tried to say lightly,—­

“What then, Mr. White?  Didn’t you know all women cried?”

The voice was too tremulous.  Stephen could not bear it.  Forgetting that they were on a public street, forgetting every thing but that Mercy was crying, he exclaimed,—­

“Mercy, what is it?  Do let me help you!  Can’t I?”

She did not even observe that he called her “Mercy.”  It seemed only natural.  Without realizing the full meaning of her words, she said,—­

“Oh, you have helped me now,” and threw up her veil, showing a face where smiles were already triumphant.  Instinct told Stephen in the same second what she had meant, and yet had not meant to say.  He dropped her hand, and said in a low voice,—­

“Mercy, did you really have tears in your eyes because I did not come?  Bless you, darling!  I don’t dare to speak to you here.  Oh, pray come down this little by-street with me.”

It was a narrow little lane behind the Brick Row into which Stephen and Mercy turned.  Although it was so near the centre of the town, it had never been properly graded, but had been left like a wild bit of uneven field.  One side of it was walled by the Brick Row; on the other side were only a few poverty-stricken houses, in which colored people lived.  The snow lay piled in drifts here all winter, and in spring it was an almost impassable slough of mud.  There was now no trodden path, only the track made by sleighs in the middle of the lane.  Into this strode Stephen, in his excitement walking so fast that Mercy could hardly keep up with him.  They were too much absorbed in their own sensations and in each other to realize the oddity of their appearance, floundering in the deep snow, looking eagerly in each other’s faces, and talking in a breathless and disjointed way.

“Mercy,” said Stephen, “I have been walking up and down waiting for you ever since I came out; but a man whom I could not get away from stopped me, and I had to stand still helpless and see you walk by the street, and I was afraid I could not overtake you.”

“Oh, was that it?” said Mercy, looking up timidly in his face.  “I felt sure you would be there this morning, because”—­