I can not yet tell whether he was in love with her or not.  I do not know where the individuality of love commences—­when love begins to be love.  He must have been a good way toward that point, however, to have thus betaken himself to denial.  He was the more interested to prove himself free, that he feared, almost believed, there was a lover concerned, and that was the reason she hated him so severely for what he had done.

He had long come to the conclusion that circumstances had straitened themselves around her.  Experience had given him a keen eye, and he had noted several things about her dress.  For one thing, while he had observed that her under-clothing was peculiarly dainty, he had once or twice caught a glimpse of such an incongruity as he was compelled to set down to poverty.  Besides, what reason in which poverty bore no part, could a lady have for being alone in a poor country lodging, without even a maid?  Indeed, might it not be the consciousness of the peculiarity of her position, and no dislike to him, that made her treat him with such impenetrable politeness?  Might she not well dread being misunderstood!

She would be wanting to pay him for his attendance—­and what was he to do?  He must let her pay something, or she would consider herself still more grievously wronged by him, but how was he to take the money from her hand?  It was very hard that ephemeral creatures of the earth, born but to die, to gleam out upon the black curtain and vanish again, might not, for the brief time the poor yet glorious bubble swelled and throbbed, offer and accept from each other even a few sunbeams in which to dance!  Would not the inevitable rain beat them down at night, and “mass them into the common clay”?  How then could they hurt each other—­why should they fear it—­when they were all wandering home to the black, obliterative bosom of their grandmother Night?  He well knew a certain reply to such reflection, but so he talked with himself.

He would take his leave as if she were a duchess.  But he would not until she made him feel another visit would be an intrusion.

One day Mrs. Puckridge met him at the door, looking mysterious.  She pointed with her thumb over her shoulder to indicate that the lady was in the garden, but at the same time nudged him with her elbow, confident that the impartment she had to make would justify the liberty, and led the way into the little parlor.

“Please, sir, and tell me,” she said, turning and closing the door, “what I be to do.  She says she’s got no money to pay neither me nor the doctor, so she give me this, and wants me to sell it.  I daren’t show it!  They’d say I stole it!  She declares that if I mention to a living soul where I got it, she’ll never speak to me again.  In course she didn’t mean you, sir, seein’ as doctors an’ clergymen ain’t nobody—­leastways nobody to speak on—­and I’m sure I beg your pardon, sir, but my meanin’ is as they ain’t them as ain’t to be told things.  I declare I’m most terrified to set eyes on the thing!”