Meantime, Ada had procured the articles she wished for, and proceeded home, with a heart which would have been light as a bird had not the remembrance of Lucy's insulting language rung in her ears. Mrs. Harcourt saw that all was not right, but she forbore making any inquiries until supper was over. Then Ada, bringing a stool to her mother's side, and laying her head on her lap, told everything which had transpired between herself, St. Leon, and Lucy.
Scarcely was her story finished when there was a rap at the door, and St. Leon himself entered the room. He had failed in overtaking Ada, and anxious to know of her safe return, had determined to call. The recognition between himself and Mrs. Harcourt was mutual, but for reasons of their own, neither chose to make it apparent, and Ada introduced him to her mother as she would have done any stranger. St. Leon possessed in an unusual degree the art of making himself agreeable, and in the animated conversation which ensued Mrs. Harcourt forgot that she was poor—forgot her aching eyes; while Ada forgot everything save that St, Leon was present, and that she was again listening to his voice, which charmed her now even more than in the olden time.
During the evening St. Leon managed in various ways to draw Ada out on all the prominent topics of the day, and he felt pleased to find that amid all her poverty she did not neglect the cultivation of her mind. A part of each day was devoted to study, which Mrs. Harcourt, who was a fine scholar, superintended.
It was fast merging toward the hour when phantoms walk abroad ere St. Leon remembered that he must go. As he was leaving he said to Ada, "I have a niece, Jenny, about your age, whom I think you would like very much."
Oh, how Ada longed to ask for her old playmate, but a look from her mother kept her silent, and in a moment St. Leon was gone.
CHAPTER VIII.
COUSIN BERINTHA AND LUCY'S PARTY.
Cousin Berintha, whom Lucy Dayton so much disliked and dreaded, was a cousin of Mr. Dayton, and was a prim, matter-of-fact maiden of fifty, or thereabout. That she was still in a state of single blessedness was partially her own fault, for at twenty she was engaged to the son of a wealthy farmer who lived near her father. But, alas! ere the wedding day arrived, there came to the neighborhood a young lady from Boston, in whose presence the beauty of the country girl grew dim, as do the stars in the rays of the morning sun.
Berintha had a plain face, but a strong heart, and when she saw that Amy Holbrook was preferred, with steady hand and unflinching nerve, she wrote to her recreant lover that he was free. And now Amy, to whom the false knight turned, took it into her capricious head that she would not marry a farmer—she had always fancied a physician; and if young B—— would win her, he must first secure the title of M.D. He complied with her request, and one week from the day on which he received his diploma Berintha read, with a slightly blanched cheek, the notice of his marriage with the Boston beauty. Three years from that day she read the announcement of Amy's death, and in two years more she refused the doctor's offer to give her a home by his lonely fireside, and a place in his widowed heart. All this had the effect of making Berintha rather cross, but she seldom manifested her spite toward any one except Lucy, whom she seemed to take peculiar delight in teasing, and whose treatment of herself was not such as would warrant much kindness in return.