Her little nervous attack passed away, and she gained strength and beauty every day.

She was becoming conscious of her gifts of fascination, and seemed to please herself with the homage of her rustic admirers.

Why was it that no one of them had the look and bearing of that young man she had seen but a moment the other evening?
To think that he should have taken up with such a weakling as Susan Posey! She sighed, and not so much thought as felt how kind it would have been in Heaven to have made her such a man.
But the image of the delicate blonde stood between her and all serious thought of Clement Lindsay.

She saw the wedding in the distance, and very foolishly thought to herself that she could not and would not go to it.
But Clement Lindsay was gone, and she must content herself with such worshippers as the village afforded.

Murray Bradshaw was surprised and confounded at the easy way in which she received his compliments, and played with his advances, after the fashion of the trained ball-room belles, who know how to be almost caressing in manner, and yet are really as far off from the deluded victim of their suavities as the topmost statue of the Milan cathedral from the peasant that kneels on its floor.