This was the picture that Stephen White saw, as he came slowly up the road on his way home after an unusually wearying day. He slackened his pace, and, perceiving how entirely unconscious Mercy was of his approach, deliberately studied her, feature, dress, attitude,--all, as scrutinizingly as if she had been painted on canvas and hanging on a wall.
"Upon my word," he said to himself, "she isn't bad-looking, after all. I'm not sure that she isn't pretty. If she hadn't that inconceivable bonnet on her head,--yes, she is very pretty. Her mouth is bewitching. I declare, I believe she is beautiful," were Stephen's successive verdicts, as he drew nearer and nearer to Mercy. Mercy was thinking of him at that very moment,--was thinking of him with a return of the annoyance and mortification which had stung her at intervals all day, whenever she recalled their interview of the previous evening. Mercy combined, in a very singular manner, some of the traits of an impulsive nature with those of an unimpulsive one. She did things, said things, and felt things with the instantaneous intensity of the poetic temperament; but she was quite capable of looking at them afterward, and weighing them with the cool and unbiassed judgment of the most phlegmatic realist. Hence she often had most uncomfortable seasons, in which one side of her nature took the other side to task, scorned it and berated it severely; holding up its actions to its remorseful view, as an elder sister might chide a younger one, who was incorrigibly perverse and wayward.
"It was about as silly a thing as you ever did in your life. He must have thought you a perfect fool to have supposed he had come down to meet you," she was saying to herself at the very moment when the sound of Stephen's footsteps first reached her ear, and caused her to look up. The sight of his face at that particular moment was so startling and so unpleasant to her that it deprived her of all self-possession. She gave a low cry, her face was flooded with crimson, and she sprang from the wall so hastily that her leaves and vines flew in every direction.
"I am very sorry I frightened you so, Mrs. Philbrick," said Stephen, quite unconscious of the true source of her confusion. "I was just on the point of speaking, when you heard me. I ought to have spoken before, but you made so charming a picture sitting there among the leaves and vines that I could not resist looking at you a little longer."
Mercy Philbrick hated a compliment. This was partly the result of the secluded life she had led; partly an instinctive antagonism in her straightforward nature to any thing which could be even suspected of not being true. The few direct compliments she had received had been from men whom she neither respected nor trusted. These words, coming from Stephen White, just at this moment, were most offensive to her.
Her face flushed still deeper red, and saying curtly,--"You frightened me very much, Mr. White; but it is not of the least consequence," she turned to walk back to the village. Stephen unconsciously stretched out his hand to detain her.
"But, Mrs. Philbrick," he said eagerly, "pray tell me what you think of the house. Do you think you can be contented in it?"
"I have not seen it," replied Mercy, in the same curt tone, still moving on.
"Not seen it!" exclaimed Stephen, in a tone which was of such intense astonishment that it effectually roused Mercy's attention. "Not seen it! Why, did you not know you were on your own stone wall? There is the house;" and Mercy, following the gesture of his hand, saw, not more than twenty rods beyond the spot where she had been sitting, a shabby, faded, yellow wooden house, standing in a yard which looked almost as neglected as the orchard, from which it was only in part separated by a tumbling stone wall.
Mercy did not speak. Stephen watched her face in silence for a moment; then he laughed constrainedly, and said,--