She waited for Thomas Ned in the kitchen that first evening, palpitating with expectancy; and he did not come. During the sleepless night that followed she conjured up excuses for him. He had had one of his attacks of rheumatism. His mother had been ill and had required his presence at home. The next evening he would come, oh certainly, and explain everything. Attired in her best, she sat and waited a second evening; then a third. There was no sign of him.
From Mary Willie she learned that Thomas had arrived with the others; that he appeared in perfect health, never handsomer; also that his mother was well.
"Oh, it cannot be that anything has happened," cried Sabine, with choking tears. "Surely it will all be explained soon!" But there was a tightening about her heart, a black premonition of ill to come.
She continued to wait. She was on the watch for him day and night. At least he would pass on the street, and she could waylay him! Every time she heard footsteps or voices she flew to the kitchen door. When her work was done, she would hurry out to the barn, where there was a little window commanding a good view of the harbor-front; and there she would sit, muffled in a shawl, for hours, hunger gnawing at her heart, her eyes dry and staring, until her teeth began to chatter with cold and nervousness.
He never passed. Some one met him taking the back road into the village. He was purposely avoiding her.
When Sabine Bob realized that she was deserted by the man she loved, thrown aside without a word, she suffered unspeakably; but her native good sense saved her from making any exhibition of her grief. She knew better than to make a fool of herself. If there was one thing she dreaded worse than death it was being laughed at. She was a self-respecting girl; she had her pride. And no one witnessed the spasms, the cyclones, which sometimes seized her in the seclusion of her little attic bedroom. These were not the picturesque, grandiose sufferings of high tragedy; there was small resemblance between Sabine Bob and Carthaginian Dido; Sabine's agonies were stark and cruel and ugly, unsoftened by poetry. But she kept them to herself.
She did her work as before. But she did not sing; and perhaps she nicked more dishes than usual, for her hands trembled a good deal. But she kept her lips tight shut. And she never went out on the street if she could help it.
So a month passed. Two months. And then one evening Mary Willee came running in breathless with news for her: news that made her skin prickle and her blood, after one dizzy, faint moment, drum hotly in her temples.
Thomas Ned was paying attentions to Tina Lejeune, that blonde young girl from the Ponds. He had taken her to a dance. He had bought a scarf for her and a bottle of perfumery. He had taken her to drive. They had been seen walking together several times in the dark on the upper street.
"Does he say he is going to marry her?" asked Sabine Bob, with dry lips.