That evening’s short-lived triumph cost me dear.  It betrayed my scarcely self-acknowledged secret to another.  Miss Hammond’s woman’s-eye had read the poor fool who laid her heart open before her.  I was made to feel my weakness before her the next morning, when, walking into our kitchen, she asked, with her hard, yet dignified calmness, that I should gather for her some of the Summer Sweetings that hung so thick on the tree behind our house.

She followed me to the orchard.  I gathered the apples diligently and spoke no word, but not for that did I escape.  She stood calmly looking on till I had finished, then began with that terrible opening from which we all shrink.

“I should like to speak to you a few moments, Janet.”

I quailed before her, for I had somehow a perception of what she was going to say, though I scarcely dreamed of the hardness with which it would by said.  The blow came, however.

“My brother has been in the habit of taking notice of you ever since he has been on the Sandy, and he has been of great advantage to you; but you must be aware that such notice as he gave you when you were a mere child cannot be continued now that you are a woman.”

I bowed my head, and my lips formed something like a “Yes.”

She went on.

“I say this to you because I was surprised to find by your behavior last night that you had allowed yourself to presume upon that notice, and I do not suppose you know how unbecoming this is, from a person in your position, especially before Miss Worthington.”

I was stung into a reply.

“What is Miss Worthington to me?” came out sullenly from my lips.

“Nothing to you, certainly, nor can she ever be; but as the future wife of my brother, she is something to me.”

It was true, then; but so fully had I felt the truth before that this certainty gave me no added pang.  From its very depths of despair I drew strength, and, my courage rising, I had power even to look full at Miss Hammond, and say,—­

“You may be sure I shall never intrude myself on Mr. Hammond’s wife or sister, nor upon him, unless he desires it, except, indeed, to wish him happiness.”

My unexpected calmness roused her worst feelings, her pride, her jealousy, and, with a woman’s keen aim, she sent the next dart home.  So calmly she spoke, too, with such command of herself,—­with a lady-like self-control that I, alas! knew not how to reach.

“I am happy to hear you say so, for there have been times when your singular manner has made me fear that you nourished some very false and idle dreams,—­follies that I have sometimes thought it my duty as a woman to warn you against”; and with one keen look at my burning face, she took up the basket and walked away.