Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/334

 nd of cunning. She might do mischief. What can Squire Clamp want? The old hovel her grandmother lives in isn't worth fifty dollars. Whatever has been going on, I'm glad Hugh is not mixed up in it."

Just then Hugh rode up, and, tying his horse, came in. He seemed to have lost something of the gayety of the morning. "I am tired," he said. "I had to get off and lead the pony down the hill, and it's steep and stony enough."

"There are pleasant roads enough in the neighborhood," said his mother, "without your being obliged to take to the woods and clamber over the mountains."

"I know it," he replied; "but I had been up towards the Allen place, and I took a notion to come back over the hill."

"Then you passed Lucy's house?"

"Yes. The bridle-path leads down the hill about a mile above this; but on foot one may keep along the ridge and come down into the valley through our garden."

"So I suppose; in fact, I believe Lucy has just returned that way."

"Indeed! it's strange I didn't see her."

"It is strange."

Hugh bore the quiet scrutiny well, and his mother came to the conclusion that the girl had told the truth about her going for the lawyer.

Presently Mildred came down from her room, and after a few minutes Mrs. Kinloch went out, casting a fixed and meaning look at her son. She seemed as impatient for the issue of her scheme, as the child who, after planting a seed, waits for the green shoot, and twice a day digs down to see if it has not sprouted.

Mildred, as the reader may suppose, was not likely to be very agreeable to her companion; the recollections of the day were too vivid, too delicious.

She could not part with them, but constantly repeated to herself the words of love, of hope, and enthusiasm, which she had heard. So she moved or talked as in a dream, mechanically, while her soul still floated away on the summer-sea of reverie.

Hugh looked at her with real admiration; and, in truth, she deserved it. A fairer face you would not see in a day's journey; her smooth skin, not too white, but of a rich creamy tint,--eyes brown and inclined to be dreamy,--her hair chestnut and wavy,--a figure rather below the medium size, but with full, graceful lines,--these, joined with a gentle nature and a certain tremulous sensibility, constituted a divinity that it was surely no sin to worship. If sin it were, all the young men in Innisfield had need of immediate forgiveness.

Hugh had some qualms about approaching the goddess. He was sensible of a wide gulf between himself and her, and he could not but think that she was aware of it too.

"You have been to Mr. Alford's?"

A momentary pause.

"Did you speak, Hugh?"

He repeated the question. Her eyes brightened a moment as she nodded in the affirmative; then they grew dim again, like windows seen from without when the light is withdrawn to an inner room. She seemed as unconscious as a pictured Madonna.

"A beautiful day for your walk," he ventured again. The same pause, the same momentary interest as she answered, followed by the same abstraction.

"I suppose," said he, at length, "that I am having the last of my idle days here; I expect to be ordered to sea shortly."

"Indeed!" Mildred looked up.

"I shall be very sorry to leave here," he continued.

"Yes, Innisfield _is_ quite pretty this summer. But I supposed that the pleasures of the seaport and of adventure abroad were more attractive to you than this monotonous life."

"'Tis rather slow here, but--I--I meant to say that I shall be sorry to leave you."

"Me? Why, mother can take care of me."

"Certainly she will, but I shall miss you."

"No doubt you'll thin