“Well, dear,” said Mrs. Simcoe, after pausing for a few moments, “I can not repeat every detail.  The time came when I was not afraid to speak to him—­when I cared to speak to no one else—­when I thought of him all day and dreamed of him all night—­when I wore the ribbons he praised, and the colors he loved, and the flowers he gave me; when he told me of the great life beyond the village, of lofty and beautiful women he had known, of wise men he had seen, of the foreign countries he had visited—­when he twined my hair around his finger and said, ‘Jane, I love you!’”

Her eyes were excited, and her voice was hurried, but inexpressibly sad.  Hope sat by, and the tears flowed from her eyes.

“A long, long time.  Yet it was only a few months—­it was only a summer.  He came in May, and was gone again in November.  But between his coming and going the roses in our garden blossomed and withered.  So you see there was time enough.  Time enough!  Time enough!  I was heavenly happy.

“One day he said that he must go.  There was some frightful trouble in his eye.  ‘Will you come back?’ I asked.  I tremble to remember how sternly I asked it, and how cold and bloodless I felt.  ‘So help me God!’ he answered, and left me.  Left me!  ‘So help me God!’ he murmured, as his tears fell upon my cheek and he kissed me.  ’So help me God!’—­and he left me.  Not a word, not a look, not a sign had he given me to suppose that he would not return; not a thought, not a wish had he breathed to me that you might not hear.  His miniature hung in a locket around my neck, even as my whole heart and soul hung upon his love.  ‘So help me God!’ he whispered, and left me.

“He did not come back.  I thought my heart was frozen.  My mother sighed as she went on with her hard, incessant work.  My father tried to be cheerful.  ‘Cry, girl, cry,’ my mother said; ’only cry, and you’ll be better.’  I could not cry; I could not smile.  I could do nothing but help her silently in the long, hard work, day after day, summer and winter.  I read the books he had given me.  I thought of the things he had said.  I sat in my chamber when the floor was scrubbed, and the bread baked, and the dishes washed, and the flies buzzed in the hot, still kitchen.  I can hear them now.  And there I sat, looking out of my window, straining my eyes toward the horizon—­sometimes sure that I heard him coming, clicking the gate, hurrying up the gravel, with his eager, handsome, melancholy face.  I started up.  My heart stood still.  I was ready to fall upon his breast and say, ’I believe ‘twas all right.’  He did not come.  ’So help me God!’ he said, and did not come.

“My father brought me to New York to change the scene.  But God had brought me here to change my heart.  I heard one Sunday good old Bishop Asbury, and he began the work that Summerfield sealed.  My parents presently died.  They left nothing, and I was the only child.  I did what I could, and at last I became your grandfather’s housekeeper.”