“Don’t you think two hours a long time to be loitering about the garden in the dark?”

“You must not be too hard on Medoline,” Mrs. Flaxman interposed.  “It is an instinct with young folk to stray under the starlight and dream their dreams.  No doubt we both have been guilty of doing it in our time.”  I flashed Mrs. Flaxman a look of gratitude, and wondered at the naive way she counted Mr. Winthrop with herself, as if he too had arrived at staid middle-agehood.

“Dreaming under stars and wandering around in attendance on widows are two very different occupations,” he said, quietly, and without a break in his voice asked Mrs. Flaxman what he should help her to.  I swallowed my breakfast—­what little I could eat—­with the feeling that possibly each succeeding mouthful might choke me; but full hearts do not usually prove fatal, even at meal time.

I arose from the table as soon as Mr. Winthrop laid down his napkin, and was hastening from the room when I heard him move back his chair; and, swift as were my movements, he was in the hall before I had reached the topmost step of the staircase.

“Just one more word, please,” I heard him say.  I turned around, resolved to take the remainder of my lecture from a position where I could look down on him.  He held out a parcel, saying:  “Will you come and get this, or shall I carry it to you?”

I descended without replying, and held out my hand for the roll.  He took hold of my hand instead.  The firm, strong grasp comforted me, though I expected a severer lecture than I had ever received before in all my life.  I looked up at him through tear-filled eyes when he said, in a strangely gentle voice for the circumstances: 

“I saw you coming along the Mill Road last night with the Blakes and their lantern.  Why were you there so late?”

“I wanted so much to tell the widow Larkum I was in a position now to help her.”

He was silent for awhile; then he said: 

“I am glad you did not try to mislead me at the breakfast-table.  I could not easily have forgiven such an act.  Next to purity, I admire perfect truth in your sex.”

“Mr. Winthrop, you will believe me that I never went out of our own grounds after night before alone, and I never will, if I live for a hundred years.”

“Pray do not make rash promises.  I only claim obedience to my wishes until you are of age.  I will accept your word until that date, and shall not go in search of you along the Mill Road, or any other disreputable portion of the town again.  Your mother’s daughter can be trusted.”

I tried to withdraw my hand, in order to escape with my tear-stained face to my own room, quite forgetting the parcel I had come down the stairway for.

“We start for New York this afternoon.  Mrs. Flaxman accompanies us.  She will be congenial society for you, having been a widow for nearly a score of years.”

“I do not care particularly for widows.  It is the poor and desolate I pity.”