"I will have her yet," he said, quite aloud; and "if I do not, I can bear that." He felt like one who would crush the stings of fate, even if against his own heart.

He had grown old and thin during the last weeks; he had worked so hard and resolutely, yet with so little hope; and he who toils without hope is no better than a slave to his own will.
That day, when he went home, his eyes were bright and his cheeks glowing.

His mother and sister noticed the difference.
"I was afraid he was gettin' all run down," Ann Edwards told Elmira; "but he looks better to-day." Elmira herself was losing her girlish bloom.

She was one who needed absolute certainties to quiet distrustful imaginations, and matters betwixt herself and Lawrence Prescott were less and less on a stable footing.

Lawrence was working hard; she should not have suspected that his truth towards her flagged, but she sometimes did.