“What are you doing there, Mary?” she said, as her eye fell on the letter.  “What is it you are reading?”

Mary felt herself grow pale; it was the first time in her whole life that her mother had asked her a question that she was not from the heart ready to answer.  Her loyalty to her only parent had gone on even-handed with that she gave to her God; she felt, somehow, that the revelations of that afternoon had opened a gulf between them, and the consciousness overpowered her.

Mrs. Scudder was astonished at her evident embarrassment, her trembling, and paleness.  She was a woman of prompt, imperative temperament, and the slightest hesitation in rendering to her a full, outspoken confidence had never before occurred in their intercourse.  Her child was the core of her heart, the apple of her eye, and intense love is always near neighbor to anger; there was, therefore, an involuntary flash from her eye and a heightening of her color, as she said,—­“Mary, are you concealing anything from your mother?”

In that moment, Mary had grown calm again.  The wonted serene, balanced nature had found its habitual poise, and she looked up innocently, though with tears in her large, blue eyes, and said,—­“No, mother,—­I have nothing that I do not mean to tell you fully.  This letter came from James Marvyn; he came here to see me this afternoon.”

“Here?—­when?  I did not see him.”

“After dinner.  I was sitting here in the window, and suddenly he came up behind me through the orchard-path.”

Mrs. Katy sat down with a flushed cheek and a discomposed air; but Mary seemed actually to bear her down by the candid clearness of the large, blue eye which she turned on her, as she stood perfectly collected, with her deadly pale face and a brilliant spot burning on each cheek.

“James came to say good-bye.  He complained that he had not had a chance to see me alone since he came home.”

“And what should he want to see you alone for?” said Mrs. Scudder, in a dry, disturbed tone.

“Mother,—­everybody has things at times which they would like to say to some one person alone,” said Mary.

“Well, tell me what he said.”

“I will try.  In the first place, he said that he always had been free, all his life, to run in and out of our house, and to wait on me like a brother.”

“Hum!” said Mrs. Scudder; “but he isn’t your brother, for all that.”

“Well, then, he wanted to know why you were so cold to him, and why you never let him walk with me from meetings or see me alone, as we often used to.  And I told him why,—­that we were not children now, and that you thought it was not best; and then I talked with him about religion, and tried to persuade him to attend to the concerns of his soul; and I never felt so much hope for him as I do now.”

Aunt Katy looked skeptical, and remarked,—­“If he really felt a disposition for religious instruction, Dr. H. could guide him much better than you could.”