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Updated: May 11, 2025
"Maybe girls are given to talking in that riddlesome kind of way," thought Jerome. He was blissfully certain upon one point, at all events. Lucina's whole manner had given evidence to a confidence and understanding upon her part. "She knows what I am doing," he told himself. "She knows how I am working, and she is contented and willing to wait. She knows, but she isn't bound."
She pictured Lucina instead of herself to her fancy; she seemed to almost see Lucina's face instead of her own in her looking-glass. When it came to giving Lucina a pleasure, she gave twofold. "Thank you, Aunt Camilla," said Lucina, delightedly, and yet with a little confusion. She felt very guilty still, how could she tell her aunt all her reasons for wishing the party?
He avoided the sight of her in every way in his power. He went to Dale and returned after dark; he stayed away from meeting. He also strove hard to drive, even the thought of her, from his mind. He got out his algebra and Latin books again; every minute during which he was not at work, and even during his work, he tried to keep his mind so full that Lucina's image could not enter.
If Lucina's parents had changed little, she had changed much, with the wonderful change of a human spring, and this time Jerome saw her as well as her gown.
Jerome had not dreamed that Lucina's indisposition had had aught to do with distress of mind upon his account. Now he fell upon work as if it had been a veritable dragon of old, which he must slay to rescue his princess. He toiled from earliest dawn until far dark, and not with hands only. Still he did not neglect his gratuitous nursing and doctoring.
So that day week Jerome, going one morning to his work, stood aside to let the stage-coach pass him, and had a glimpse of Lucina's fair face in the wave of a blue veil at the window. She bowed, but the stage dashed by in such a fury of dust that Jerome could scarcely discern the tenor of the salutation. He thought that she smiled, and not unhappily.
He loved his sister, and would have defended her against depreciation with his life, but he compared inwardly, with scorn, her sweet ways with Lucina's. "There isn't a girl her equal in this world," cried her lover, enthusiastically. "Don't you say so, Jerome? You're her brother, you know what she is. Did you ever see anything like that cunning little face she makes, when she looks up at you?"
He worked silently, with fierce energy, the rest of the morning. He had not heard before of Lucina's ill health; she had not been to church the Sunday previous, but he had thought of nothing serious from that. Now the dreadful possibility came to him suppose she should die and leave his world entirely, of what avail would all his toil be then?
Lawyer Eliphalet Means brought for his offering a sandal-wood fan, a veritable lacework of wood, spreading it himself in his lean brown hand, which matched in hue, and eying it with a sort of dryly humorous satisfaction before he gave it into Lucina's keeping. Squire Eben, despite his gratification for his daughter's sake, burst into a great laugh.
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.
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