As often as she realized this the blood rushed to her cheeks. She washed herself ten times in the day, yet it seemed she could never be clean.
For what was it that had happened? Was it of the last extremity of shame? Was she now any better than the many wretched girls whose errors she had shuddered to think of, and had never been able to understand? Ah, if there were only any one she could question! If she could only unburden her mind of all the doubt and uncertainty that tortured her; learn clearly what she had done; find out if she had still the right to look her father in the face—or if she were the most miserable of all sinners.
Her father often asked her if she could not confide to him what was weighing on her mind; for he felt that she was keeping something from him. But when she looked into his clear eyes, into his pure open face, it seemed impossible, literally impossible, to approach that terrible impure point and she only wept. She thought sometimes of that good Mrs. Hartvig’s soft hand; but she was a stranger, and far away. So she must e’en fight out her fight in utter solitude, and so quietly that no one should be aware of it.
And he, who was pursuing his path through life with so bright a countenance and so heavy a heart! Should she ever see him again? And if she were ever to meet him, where should she hide herself? He was an inseparable part of all her doubt and pain; but she felt no bitterness, no resentment towards him. All that she suffered bound her closer to him, and he was never out of her thoughts.
In the daily duties of the household Rebecca was as punctual and careful as ever. But in everything she did he was present to her memory. Innunmerable spots in the house and garden recalled him to her thoughts; she met him in the door-ways; she remembered where he stood when first he spoke to her. She had never been at the King’s Knoll since that day; it was there that he had clasped her round the waist, and—kissed her.
The Pastor was full of solicitude about his daughter; but whenever the Doctor’s hint occurred to him he shook his head, half angrily. How could he dream that a practised hand, with a well-worn trick of the fence, could pierce the armor of proof with which he had provided her?
If the spring had been late, the autumn was early.
One fine warm summer evening it suddenly began to rain. The next day it was still raining; and it poured incessantly, growing ever colder and colder, for eleven days and nights on end. At last it cleared up; but the next night there were four degrees of frost. [Note: Réaumur.]
On the bushes and trees the leaves hung glued together after the long rain; and when the frost had dried them after its fashion, they fell to the ground in multitudes at every little puff of wind.
The Pastor’s tenant was one of the few that had got their corn in; and now it had to be threshed while there was water for the machine. The little brook in the valley rushed foaming along, as brown as coffee, and all the men on the farm were taken up with tending the machine and carting corn and straw up and down the Parsonage hill.