But Clement Lindsay was gone, and she must content herself with such worshippers as the village afforded.  Murray Bradshaw was surprised and confounded at the easy way in which she received his compliments, and played with his advances, after the fashion of the trained ball-room belles, who know how to be almost caressing in manner, and yet are really as far off from the deluded victim of their suavities as the topmost statue of the Milan cathedral from the peasant that kneels on its floor.  He admired her all the more for this, and yet he saw that she would be a harder prize to win than he had once thought.  If he made up his mind that he would have her, he must go armed with all implements, from the red hackle to the harpoon.

The change which surprised Murray Bradshaw could not fail to be noticed by all those about her.  Miss Silence had long ago come to pantomime, rolling up of eyes, clasping of hands, making of sad mouths, and the rest,—­but left her to her own way, as already the property of that great firm of World & Co. which drives such sharp bargains for young souls with the better angels.  Cynthia studied her for her own purposes, but had never gained her confidence.  The Irish servant saw that some change had come over her, and thought of the great ladies she had sometimes looked upon in the old country.  They all had a kind of superstitious feeling about Myrtle’s bracelet, of which she had told them the story, but which Kitty half believed was put in the drawer by the fairies, who brought her ribbons and partridge feathers, and other slight adornments with which she contrived to set off her simple costume, so as to produce those effects which an eye for color and cunning fingers can bring out of almost nothing.

Gifted Hopkins was now in a sad, vacillating condition, between the two great attractions to which he was exposed.  Myrtle looked so immensely handsome ere Sunday when he saw her going to church, not to meeting, for she world not go, except when she knew Father Pemberton was going to be the preacher, that the young poet was on the point of going down on his knees to her, and telling her that his heart was hers and hers alone.  But he suddenly remembered that he had on his best trousers, and the idea of carrying the marks of his devotion in the shape of two dusty impressions on his most valued article of apparel turned the scale against the demonstration.  It happened the next morning, that Susan Posey wore the most becoming ribbon she had displayed for a long time, and Gifted was so taken with her pretty looks that he might very probably have made the same speech to her that he had been on the point of making to Myrtle the day before, but that he remembered her plighted affections, and thought what he should have to say for himself when Clement Lindsay, in a frenzy of rage and jealousy, stood before him, probably armed with as many deadly instruments as a lawyer mentions by name in an indictment for murder.