“Then that is the reason why you still see Mr. Munroe, after what you said,” she remarked quietly to Jessie.

Jessie, who would have liked to escape with her father, was obliged to pause on the threshold of the door, with a pretty assumption of blank forgetfulness in her blue eyes and lifted eyebrows.

“Said what? when?” she asked vacantly.

“When—­when Mr. Kearney that day—­in the woods—­went away,” said Christie, faintly coloring.

“Oh!  That day,” said Jessie briskly; “the day he just gloved your hand with kisses, and then fled wildly into the forest to conceal his emotion.”

“The day he behaved very foolishly,” said Christie, with reproachful calmness, that did not, however, prevent a suspicion of indignant moisture in her eyes—­“when you explained”—­

“That it wasn’t meant for me,” interrupted Jessie.

“That it was to you that Mr. MUNROE’S attentions were directed.  And then we agreed that it was better to prevent any further advances of this kind by avoiding any familiar relations with either of them.”

“Yes,” said Jessie, “I remember; but you’re not confounding my seeing Fairfax occasionally now with that sort of thing.  He doesn’t kiss my hand like anything,” she added, as if in abstract reflection.

“Nor run away, either,” suggested the trodden worm, turning.

There was an ominous silence.

“Do you know we are nearly out of coffee?” said Jessie choking, but moving towards the door with Spartan-like calmness.

“Yes.  And something must be done this very day about the washing,” said Christie, with suppressed emotion, going towards the opposite entrance.

Tears stood in each other’s eyes with this terrible exchange of domestic confidences.  Nevertheless, after a moment’s pause, they deliberately turned again, and, facing each other with frightful calmness, left the room by purposeless and deliberate exits other than those they had contemplated—­a crushing abnegation of self, that, to some extent, relieved their surcharged feelings.

Meantime the material prosperity of Devil’s Ford increased, if a prosperity based upon no visible foundation but the confidences and hopes of its inhabitants could be called material.  Few, if any, stopped to consider that the improvements, buildings, and business were simply the outlay of capital brought from elsewhere, and as yet the settlement or town, as it was now called, had neither produced nor exported capital of itself equal to half the amount expended.  It was true that some land was cultivated on the further slope, some mills erected and lumber furnished from the inexhaustible forest; but the consumers were the inhabitants themselves, who paid for their produce in borrowed capital or unlimited credit.  It was never discovered that while all roads led to Devil’s Ford, Devil’s Ford led to nowhere.  The difficulties overcome