And Thomas agreed, as he was likely to do to all which she proposed which touched not his own sense of right and honor.  Young Evelina gave Thomas one more kiss for his earnest pleading, and that night wrote out the tale in her journal.  “It may be that I overstepped the bounds of maidenly decorum,” wrote Evelina, “but my heart did so entreat me,” and no blame whatever did she lay upon Thomas.

Young Evelina opened her heart only to her journal, and her cousin was told nothing, and had little cause for suspicion.  Thomas Merriam never came to the house to see his sweetheart; he never walked home with her from meeting.  Both were anxious to avoid village gossip, until the elder Evelina could be told.

Often in the summer evenings the lovers met, and strolled hand in hand across the fields, and parted at the garden gate with the one kiss which Evelina allowed, and that was all.

Sometimes when young Evelina came in with her lover’s kiss still warm upon her lips the elder Evelina looked at her wistfully, with a strange retrospective expression in her blue eyes, as if she were striving to remember something that the girl’s face called to mind.  And yet she could have had nothing to remember except dreams.

And once, when young Evelina sat sewing through a long summer afternoon and thinking about her lover, the elder Evelina, who was storing rose leaves mixed with sweet spices in a jar, said, suddenly, “He looks as his father used to.”

Young Evelina started.  “Whom do you mean, Cousin Evelina?” she asked, wonderingly; for the elder Evelina had not glanced at her, nor even seemed to address her at all.

“Nothing,” said the elder Evelina, and a soft flush stole over her withered face and neck, and she sprinkled more cassia on the rose leaves in the jar.

Young Evelina said no more; but she wondered, partly because Thomas was always in her mind, and it seemed to her naturally that nearly everything must have a savor of meaning of him, if her cousin Evelina could possibly have referred to him and his likeness to his father.  For it was commonly said that Thomas looked very like his father, although his figure was different.  The young man was taller and more firmly built, and he had not the meek forward curve of shoulder which had grown upon his father of late years.

When the frosty nights came Thomas and Evelina could not meet and walk hand in hand over the fields behind the Squire’s house, and they very seldom could speak to each other.  It was nothing except a “good-day” on the street, and a stolen glance, which set them both a-trembling lest all the congregation had noticed, in the meeting-house.  When the winter set fairly in they met no more, for the elder Evelina was taken ill, and her young cousin did not leave her even to go to meeting.  People said they guessed it was Evelina Adams’s last sickness, and they furthermore guessed that she would divide her property between her cousin Martha Loomis and her two girls and Evelina Leonard, and that Evelina would have the house as her share.