Elmira held out her arms towards him with an involuntary motion.  “Oh, Jerome!” she whispered.

The brother and sister had always been chary of caresses, but now Jerome drew Elmira close, pressed her little head against his shoulder, and let her cry there.

“Don’t, Elmira,” he said, at length, brokenly, smoothing her hair.  “You know brother wants you to be happy.  You are the only little sister he’s got.”

“Oh, Jerome, I couldn’t help it!” sobbed Elmira.

“Of course you couldn’t,” said Jerome.  “Don’t cry—­I’ll work hard and save, and maybe I can get enough money to give you a house and furniture when you’re married, then you won’t be quite so beholden.”

“But you’ll—­get married yourself, Jerome,” whispered Elmira, who had built a romance about her brother and Lucina after the night of the party.

“No, I shall never get married myself,” said Jerome, “all my money is for my sister.”  He laughed, but that night after Elmira was fast asleep in her chamber across the way, he lay awake tasting to the fullest his own cup of bitterness from its contrast with another’s sweet.

The longing to see Lucina, to have only the sight of her dear beautiful face to comfort him, grew as the weeks went on, but he would not yield to it.  He had, however, to reckon against odds which he had not anticipated, and they were the innocent schemes of Lucina herself.  She had hoped at first that his call was only deferred, that he would come to see her of his own accord, but she soon decided that he would not, and that all the advances must be from herself, since she was undoubtedly at fault.  She had fully resolved to make amends for any rudeness and lack of cordiality of which she might have been guilty, at the first opportunity she should have.  She planned to speak to him going home from meeting, or on some week day on the village street—­she had her little speech all ready, but the chance to deliver it did not come.

But when she went to meeting Sunday after Sunday, dressed in her prettiest, looking like something between a rose and an angel, and no Jerome was there for her soft backward glances, and when she never met him when she was alone on the village street, she grew impatient.

About this time Lucina’s father bought her a beautiful little white horse, like the milk-white palfrey of a princess in a fairy tale, and she rode every day over the county.  Usually Squire Eben accompanied her on a tall sorrel which had been in his possession for years, but still retained much youthful fire.  The sorrel advanced with long lopes and fretted at being reined to suit the pace of the little white horse, and Squire Eben had disliked riding from his youth, unless at a hard gallop with gun on saddle, towards a distant lair of game.  Both he and the tall sorrel rebelled as to their nerves and muscles at this ladylike canter over smooth roads, but the Squire would neither permit his tender Lucina to ride fast, lest she get thrown and hurt, or to ride alone.