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430 Maynard the idea of Mrs. Dolliver's foreign trip, and expressed herself positively as against joining the old lady in it.

"I want to stay here," Loretta said, as she and the doctor were seated in the sail-boat that took them to The Fenns. "I don't know yet what I shall do with myself, but, whatever it may be, it will be here. I have thought a great deal about going to Europe, but I believe that I shall in reality feel nearer to Kenyon down here at home."

Dr. Maynard agreed with this, in the same fashion that he had gone on agreeing with everything Loretta had said since her return from Mayridge. There were certain things about the girl which startled and bewildered him, and, above all, this sudden development of self-will or power of decision, before which he yielded as unquestioningly as he would have admitted the fact that a flash of lightning above a field of daisies and buttercups was as powerful as though it had occurred while he was traversing a macadamized road. Not one word had Loretta said of her discovery, as yet, to the good old man; but when the boat touched at the landing in front of his little cottage first, and he was about leaving her, she turned to him eagerly, with a glance which showed him something had been weighing on her mind, to say,—

"Can you come across to Little Fenn to-night for a while? or shall I come to you to-morrow?" She paused a moment, and then added, decidedly, "To-morrow will be the best. I will come, doctor,—if I may,—about four o'clock." And a moment later the boy who was managing the boat, and who had been stricken as with a helpless silence by the sight of Loretta's changed appearance, was making slowly for the wharf of Little Fenn.

lioretta turned, facing the island, with her heart beating almost to suffocation. She had not dreamed that the sight of these familiar shores, the stretch of sailless water which she had crossed just now, the outward look of things belonging to her past, would affect her as they did. It was not happiness in any way. It seemed to the girl all a sickening sort of misery,—a shame, a sense of something like ignominious failure with which she was returning to Kenyon's home. If only she could cry aloud and say something of this terrible burden pressing upon her! But there was not alone the reticence of years to contend with, but the fact borne in upon the innermost fibres of her soul that she must not betray Kenyon in any way save to protect him.

When Loretta had been very young,—a slip of a girl going to the old school-house and enjoying many an evening with old Mr. Blake during Kenyon's visits,—the young man had once said to her,—

"Loretta, there is one thing about you I don't know how to understand. You have the greatest obstinacy of any human being I ever knew."

And old Mr. Blake had interposed quickly: "What are you talking about, Kenyon? What do you call obstinacy in the child?"

And Kenyon had laughed lightly, and answered, "Well, it isn't obstinacy. I suppose it's loyalty. I verily believe, Loretta Gardiner, that if you had ever cared about an old stick or a stone you would go on caring for it until you were in your grave."