"Good-afternoon," Patty called, with a fine assumption of gayety.
"Good-afternoon," he answered, coming up to her side, and leaning upon the railing of the bridge.
"Are you thinking of suicide?" she asked, as he continued to look, not at her, but intently into the water.
"I don't much care; only don't have that dreadful dead-and-gone expression."
"Because it does not please me to have you," she said.
"Oh!" he retorted. "The trouble is not in me, then, but in your mood."
"I am not given to moods. I am _semper idem_."
"Thank you!" Patty replied. "You are as complimentary as your uncle."
"At various places in Montfield all my life."
Hazard began to look at her curiously. He had at first noticed nothing strange in her manner, being too much occupied with his own disquietude, having left the house after aunt Pamela had confided to him his uncle's passion. He had been walking along the side of the brook, recalling the thousand signs of this love which he had seen, and yet accounted not at all; and he wondered, man-like, at his own obtuseness to what now seemed so clear. When he met Patty, he was absorbed in counterfeiting indifference; but something in her tone made him perceive at length that she was not her usual self. Perhaps the love in his own heart, whose fruition he had unquestioningly resigned at the words of aunt Pamela, made him clearer sighted. He longed to question her, to tell her of his uncle's love and of his own. His lip trembled with the impetuous words he could not speak, and his eyes were fixed upon her face with an intense gaze which was more than she could bear.
"Good-by," she said hastily, and went her way.
"Don't fail to be at rehearsal," she called, lest he should think her leave-taking abrupt.
But she would not look back, for her eyes were full of tears.
Hazard walked thoughtfully on towards the house, which he reached just as a woman drove to the front entrance. It was the woman who went under the name of Mrs. Smithers, and she had driven over from Samoset after Mr. Putnam.
The road to Samoset was up hill and down hill, and altogether uneven; but it lay through a lovely country, just now colored with those soft hues autumn wears before her gorgeous gala dress is ready. Beside the way the squirrels leaped and chattered in the Sunday stillness as our friends drove to church. Flossy had proposed that they call for Ease Apthorpe; and her cousin, who had been secretly wishing her to make this suggestion, assented with alacrity. Ease yielded to the temptation of a ride on so beautiful an afternoon, and abandoned her own for the Unitarian service at Samoset. In spite of Mrs. Sanford's reflections upon the narrowness of modern buggies, the seat of their carriage proved wide enough for the three, perhaps because Ease, like Flossy, was rather small.