Anna had faith in Adam’s goodness, and this it was which nerved her at the last to wash the tear-stains from her face and rearrange the golden curls falling about her forehead. “He’ll know I’ve been crying,” she said, “but that will pave the way to what I have to tell him;” and with one hasty glance at the fair young face which Adam thought so beautiful, she ran lightly down the stairs, glad that her mother was present when she first greeted Adam. But the mother, remembering her own girlish days, soon left the room, and the lovers were alone.
“What is it, darling? Are you sick?” and Adam’s broad palm rested caressingly upon the bowed head of Anna, who could not meet his earnest glance for shame.
She said something about being nervous and tired because of the excessive heat, and then, steadying her voice, she continued:
“You have come for me to see the cottage, I suppose. We will go at once, as I must return before it’s dark,”
Her manner troubled him, but he made no comment until they were out upon the highway, when he said to her timidly, “If you are tired, perhaps you would not mind taking my arm. Folks will not talk about it, now we are so near being one.”
Anna could not take his arm, so she replied: “Somebody might gossip; I’d better walk alone,” and coquettishly swinging the hat she carried instead of wore, she walked by his side silently, save when he addressed her directly. Poor Adam! there were clouds gathering around his heart, blacker far than the dark rift rising so rapidly in the western sky. There was something the matter with Anna more than weariness or heat, but he would not question her there, and so a dead silence fell between them until the cottage was reached, and standing with her on the threshold of the door, he said, mournfully, but oh! so tenderly, “Does my little Blossom like the home I have prepared for her, and is she willing to live here with me?”
CHAPTER III.
IN THE COTTAGE.
She seemed to him so fair, so pure, so like the apple blossoms of early June, that he often called her his little Blossom, but now there was a touching pathos in the tones of his voice as he repeated the pet name, and it wrung from Anna a gush of tears. Lifting her blue eyes to his for an instant, she laid her head upon his arm and cried piteously:
“Oh, Adam, you are so good, so much better than I deserve. Yes, I like it, so much.”