As Mercy’s circle of friends widened, and her interests enlarged and deepened, her relation to Stephen became at once easier and harder:  easier, because she no longer spent so many hours alone in perplexed meditation as to the possible wrong in it; harder, because he was frequently unreasonable, jealous of the pleasure that he saw she found in others, jealous of the pleasure she gave to others,—­jealous, in short, of every thing in which he was not her centre.  Mercy was very patient with him.  She loved him unutterably.  She never forgot for an instant the quiet heroism with which he bore his hard life.  As the months had gone on, she had gradually established a certain kindly familiarity with his mother; going in often to see her, taking her little gifts of flowers or fruit, and telling her of all little incidents which might amuse her.  She seemed to herself in this way to be doing a little towards sharing Stephen’s burden; and she also felt a certain bond to the woman who, being Stephen’s mother, ought to have been hers by adoption.  The more she saw of Mrs. White’s tyrannical, exacting nature, the more she yearned over Stephen.  Her first feeling of impatience with him, of resentment at the seeming want of manliness in such subjection, had long ago worn away.  She saw that there were but two courses for him,—­either to leave the house, or to buy a semblance of peace at any cost.

“Flesh and blood can’t stand up agin Mis’ White,” said Marty one day, in an irrepressible confidence to Mercy.  “An’ the queerest thing is, that she’ll never let go on you.  There ain’t nothin’ to hender my goin’ away any day, an’ there hain’t been for twenty year; but she sez I’m to stay till she dies, an’ I don’t make no doubt I shall.  It’s Mister Stephen I stay for, though, after all, more ’n ’t is her.  I don’t believe the Lord ever made such a man.”

Mercy’s cheeks would burn after such a talk as this; and she would lavish upon Stephen every device of love and cheer which she could invent, to atone to him by hours, if possible, for the misery of days.

But the hours were few and far between.  Stephen’s days were filled with work, and his evenings were his mother’s.  Only after she slept did he have freedom.  Just as soon as it was safe for him to leave the house, he flew to Mercy; but, oh, how meagre and pitiful did the few moments seem!

“Hardly long enough to realize that I am with you, my darling,” he often said.

“But then it is every day, Stephen,—­think of that,” Mercy would reply, bent always on making all things easier instead of harder for him.  Even the concealment, which was at times well-nigh insupportable to her, she never complained of now.  She had accepted it.  “And, after accepting it, I have no right to reproach him with it:  it would be base,” she thought.

Nevertheless, it was slowly wearing away the very foundations of her peace.  The morning walks had long been given up.  Mercy had been resolute about this.  When she found Stephen insisting upon going in by-ways and lanes, lest some one should see them who might mention it to his mother, when he told her that she must not speak of it to her own mother, she said firmly,—­