Abigail Merritt had never been a rebel, indeed, but there had been unruly possibilities within her.

She remembered well what she had told her mother when her vague dreams had ended and Eben Merritt had come a-wooing.

"I like him, and I suppose, because I like him I've got to marry him, but it makes me mad, mother." Looking now at this daughter of hers, with her exceeding beauty and delicacy, which a touch would seem to profane and soil as much as that of a flower or butterfly, she had an impulse to hide her away and cover her always from the sight and handling of all except maternal love.

She took much comfort in the surety that there was as yet no definite lover in Lucina's horizon.

She did not reflect that no human soul is too transparent to be clouded to the vision of others, and its own, by the sacred intimacy with its own desires.