She did not answer Thomas's letter. It was so worded that it seemed
to require no reply, and she felt that he must be sure of her
acquiescence in whatever he thought best. She laid the letter away in
a little rosewood box, in which she had always kept her dearest
treasures since her school-days. Sometimes she took it out and read
it, and it seemed to her that the pain in her heart would put an end
to her in spite of all her prayers for Christian fortitude; and yet
she could not help reading it again.
It was seldom that she stole a look at her old lover as he stood in
the pulpit in the meeting-house, but when she did she thought with an
anxious pang that he looked worn and ill, and that night she prayed
that the Lord would restore his health to him for the sake of his
people.
It was four months after Evelina Adams's death, and her garden was in
the full glory of midsummer, when one evening, towards dusk, young
Evelina went slowly down the street. She seldom walked abroad now,
but kept herself almost as secluded as her cousin had done before
her. But that night a great restlessness was upon her, and she put a
little black silk shawl over her shoulders and went out. It was quite
cool, although it was midsummer. The dusk was deepening fast; the
katydids called back and forth from the wayside bushes.
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