Oh, how Ada longed to ask for her old playmate, but a look from her mother kept her silent, and in a moment St. Leon was gone.

CHAPTER VIII.

COUSIN BERINTHA AND LUCY’S PARTY.

Cousin Berintha, whom Lucy Dayton so much disliked and dreaded, was a cousin of Mr. Dayton, and was a prim, matter-of-fact maiden of fifty, or thereabout.  That she was still in a state of single blessedness was partially her own fault, for at twenty she was engaged to the son of a wealthy farmer who lived near her father.  But, alas! ere the wedding day arrived, there came to the neighborhood a young lady from Boston, in whose presence the beauty of the country girl grew dim, as do the stars in the rays of the morning sun.

Berintha had a plain face, but a strong heart, and when she saw that Amy Holbrook was preferred, with steady hand and unflinching nerve, she wrote to her recreant lover that he was free.  And now Amy, to whom the false knight turned, took it into her capricious head that she would not marry a farmer—­she had always fancied a physician; and if young B——­ would win her, he must first secure the title of M.D.  He complied with her request, and one week from the day on which he received his diploma Berintha read, with a slightly blanched cheek, the notice of his marriage with the Boston beauty.  Three years from that day she read the announcement of Amy’s death, and in two years more she refused the doctor’s offer to give her a home by his lonely fireside, and a place in his widowed heart.  All this had the effect of making Berintha rather cross, but she seldom manifested her spite toward any one except Lucy, whom she seemed to take peculiar delight in teasing, and whose treatment of herself was not such as would warrant much kindness in return.

Lizzie she had always loved, and when Harry Graham went away it was on Berintha’s lap that the young girl sobbed out her grief, wondering, when with her tears Berintha’s were mingled, how one apparently so cold and passionless could sympathize with her.  To no one had Berintha ever confided the story of her early love.  Mr. Dayton was a schoolboy then, and as but little was said of it at the time, it faded entirely from memory; and when Lucy called her a “crabbed old maid,” she knew not of the disappointment which had clouded every joy and imbittered a whole lifetime.

At the first intelligence of Lizzie’s illness Berintha came, and though her prescriptions of every kind of herb tea in the known world were rather numerous, and her doses of the same were rather large, and though her stiff cap, sharp nose, and curious little eyes, which saw everything, were exceedingly annoying to Lucy, she proved herself an invaluable nurse, warming up old Dr. Benton’s heart into a glow of admiration of her wonderful skill!  Hour after hour she sat by Lizzie, bathing her burning brow, or smoothing her tumbled pillow.  Night after night she kept her tireless watch, treading softly around the sick-room, and lowering her loud, harsh voice to a whisper, lest she should disturb the uneasy slumbers of the sick girl, who, under her skilful nursing, gradually grew better.