"I
suppose," she continued, "the only way will be to work harder, and
try to forget it. They wanted me to go out and stay with them; but
of course I couldn't. I shall work, and I shall read. I shall not
find another Madeline Swan! You must have been reading a great deal
this summer, Mr. Barker," she said, in turning upon him from her
bereavement. "Have you seen any of the old boarders? Or Mrs. Harmon?
I shall never have another winter like that at the poor old St.
Albans!"
Lemuel made what answer he could. There was happiness enough in
merely being with her to have counterbalanced all the pain he was
suffering; and when she made him partner of her interests and
associations, and appealed to their common memories in confidence of
his sympathy, his heavy heart stirred with strange joy. He had
supposed that Berry must have warned her against him; but she was
treating him as if he had not. Perhaps he had not, and perhaps he
had done so, and this was her way of showing that she did not
believe it. He tried to think so; he knew it was a subterfuge, but
he lingered in it with a fleeting, fearful pleasure. They had
crossed from the Common and were walking up under the lindens of
Chestnut Street, and from time to time they stopped, in the
earnestness of their parley, and stood talking, and then loitered on
again in the summer security from oversight which they were too rapt
to recognise.
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