On the way down the hill Mather passed Wayne. This was that broker's clerk who always nodded to Ellis so carelessly, whose mother Ellis had bought out, and whose name the promoter envied. Handsome, thought Mather as they greeted; on second thought he added, a bit weak. But Mrs. Harmon, looking from her garden as they passed on the road below, thought that Wayne was handsome without qualification. Thus those two, both of whom were to influence Wayne's fate, thought of him as he went on to see Beth. Mrs. Harmon followed him with her eyes until he entered the Blanchards' gate; with her thoughts, still longer. Mather forgot him in grieving for Pease, the poor dreamer who would wake too late.
"Beth," asked Judith, returning to the house, "where was it we read about Salvation Yeo?"
"In Kingsley's 'Westward Ho,'" answered Beth. After Wayne had come and gone, she noticed that Judith was reading the book.
"Do you like it?" asked Beth.
"Romance—love," said Judith. "It seems unnatural." She laid the book aside. "A pleasant evening, Beth?"
"Very," Beth answered.
"And Mr. Pease?" asked Judith.
She saw with surprise that Beth's eyes filled with tears. "What can I do?" asked the younger sister; but expecting no answer, she went away.
Judith took up her book again, yet held it without opening it. Romance and love had come to Beth; why not to herself? Judith had had suitors; and true love might win her yet. Was it to be found? Such lasting love, she meant, as it was certain Pease would give. No wonder Beth grieved; any woman's heart would be touched by such devotion. Yet as Judith thought of her old suitors she could name half a dozen now married, having forgotten their griefs. But it was Mather who was most in her mind, who ever since his rejection had been so strangely independent, and this evening most of all. He had shown no surprise, no dismay, at the sight of Ellis's house-plans. At the thought Judith started up with pique, resentment—it would have been hard to define her feeling at the thought that Mather needed no one to sorrow for him.