As for Elmira, she tried to comfort her mother, and she had an anxious curiosity about Jerome and his call at the Merritts’; but Lawrence Prescott was coming that evening.

Presently Ann heard her singing up-stairs in her chamber, whither she had gone to curl her hair and change her gown.

“I’m glad somebody can sing,” muttered Ann; but in the depths of her heart was a wish that her son, instead of her daughter, could have had the reason for song, if it were appointed to one only.  “Women don’t take things so hard as men,” reasoned Ann Edwards.

When Jerome knocked at Squire Merritt’s door that evening, Mrs. Merritt opened it.  For a minute everything was dark before him; he had thought that he might see Lucina.  His voice sounded strange in his own ears when he replied to Mrs. Merritt’s greeting; he almost reeled when he followed her into the parlor.  It was a cool, spring night, and there was a fire on the hearth.  A silver branch of candles on the mantel-shelf lit the room.

Mrs. Merritt looked anxiously at Jerome as she placed a chair.  “I hope you are well,” she said, in her quick way, but her voice was kind.  Jerome thought it sounded like Lucina’s.  He stammered that he was quite well.

“You look pale.”

When he made no response to that, she added, with a motherly cadence, that he had been through a great deal lately; that she had felt very sorry about the loss of his mill.

Jerome thanked her.  He sat opposite, in a great mahogany arm-chair, holding himself very erect; but his pulses sang in his ears, and his downcast eyes scanned the roses in the carpet.  He did not understand it, but he was for the moment like a school-boy before the aroused might of feminity of this little woman.

“It is partly about your mill that I want to see you,” said Abigail Merritt.  “The Squire has something which he wishes to propose, but he has begged me to do so for him.  He thinks my chances of success are better.  I don’t know about that,” she finished, smiling.

Jerome looked up then, with quick attention, and she came at once to the point.  Abigail Merritt, her mind once made up, was not a woman to beat long about a bush.  “The Squire has, as you know,” she said, “a legacy of five thousand dollars from poor Colonel Lamson.  He wishes to invest part of it.  He would like to rebuild your mill.”

Jerome colored high.  “Thank him, and thank you,” he said; “but—­”

“He does not propose to give it to you,” she interposed, quickly.  “He would not venture to propose that, however much he might like to do so.  His plan is to rebuild the mill, and for you to work it on shares—­you to have your share of the profits for your labor.  You could have the chance to buy him out later, when you were able.”