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“What a fool I have been to imagine he could care for me!” she said bitterly. “He has only been amusing himself with my folly. And to think that I let him kiss me the other night!”

She thought of that kiss with a pitiful shame. She hated herself for the weakness that could not check her tears. Her lonely life had been brightened by the companionship of her young lover. The youth and girlhood of which fate had cheated her had come to her with love; the future had looked rosy with promise; now it had darkened with dourness and greyness.

Maggie Hatfield came that day to sew. Bessy had intended to have a dark-blue silk made up and an evening waist of pale pink cashmere. She had expected to wear the latter at a party which was to come off a fortnight later, and she had got it to please Lawrence, because he had told her that pink was his favourite colour. She would have neither it nor the silk made up now. She put them both away and instead brought out an ugly pattern of snuff-brown stuff, bought years before and never used.

“But where is your lovely pink, Bessy?” asked the dressmaker. “Aren’t you going to have it for the party?”

“No, I’m not going to have it made up at all,” said Bessy listlessly. “It’s too gay for me. I was foolish to think it would ever suit me. This brown will do for a spring suit. It doesn’t make much difference what I wear.”

Maggie Hatfield, who had not been at prayer meeting the night beforehand knew nothing of what had occurred, looked at her curiously, wondering what Lawrence Eastman could see in her to be as crazy about her as some people said he was. Bessy was looking her oldest and plainest just then, with her hair combed severely back from her pale, dispirited face.

“It must be her money he is after,” thought the dressmaker. “She looks over thirty, and she can’t pretend to be pretty. I believe she thinks a lot of him, though.”

For the most part, Lynnfield people believed that Bessy had thrown Lawrence over. This opinion was borne out by his woebegone appearance. He was thin and pale; his face had lost its youthful curves and looked hard and mature. He was moody and taciturn and his speech and manner were marked by a new cynicism.

* * * * *

In April a well-to-do storekeeper from an adjacent village began to court Bessy Houghton. He was over fifty, and had never been a handsome man in his best days, but Lynnfield oracles opined that Bessy would take him. She couldn’t expect to do any better, they said, and she was looking terribly old and dowdy all at once.

In June Maggie Hatfield went to the Eastmans’ to sew. The first bit of news she imparted to Mrs. Eastman was that Bessy Houghton had refused Jabez Lea–at least, he didn’t come to see her any more.

Mrs. Eastman twitched her thread viciously. “Bessy Houghton was born an old maid,” she said sharply. “She thinks nobody is good enough for her, that is what’s the matter. Lawrence got some silly boy-notion into his head last winter, but I soon put a stop to that.”

“I always had an idea that Bessy thought a good deal of Lawrence,” said Maggie. “She has never been the same since he left off going with her. I was up there the morning after that prayer-meeting night people talked so much of, and she looked positively dreadful, as if she hadn’t slept a wink the whole night.”

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Eastman decisively. “She would never think of taking a boy like him when she’d turned up her nose at better men. And I didn’t want her for a daughter-in-law anyhow. I can’t bear her. So I put my foot down in time. Lawrence sulked for a spell, of course–boy-fashion–and he’s been as fractious as a spoiled baby ever since.”