Lucina in those days was occupied with some pieces of embroidery in gay wools on cloth.

There were varied designs of little dogs with bead eyes, baskets of flowers, wreaths, and birds on sprays.

She had an ambition to embroider a whole set of parlor-chairs, as some young ladies in her school had done, and there was in her mind a dim and scarcely admitted fancy that these same chairs might add state to some future condition of hers.
Lucina had always innocently taken it for granted that she should some day be married and have a house of her own, and very near her father's.

When she had begun the embroidery she had furnished a shadowy little parlor of a shadowy house with the fine chairs, and admitted at the parlor door a dim and stately presence, so shadowy to her timid maiden fancy that there was scarcely a suggestion of substance.
Now, however, the shadow seemed to deepen and clear in outline.
Lucina fell to wondering if Jerome Edwards thought embroidered chairs pretty or silly.

Often she would pause in her counting and setting even cross-barred stitches, lean her soft cheek on her slender white hand, and sit so a long while, with her fair curls drooping over her gentle, brooding face.