The color came back to Agnes’s face, and she gave her mother a grateful look, yet her poor little heart was very sore. Alicia! and he had not forgotten; the old love was the strongest. If he had never gone back, perhaps all would have been well, but now he believed her pledged to Archie, and he would return to his first love. Why had she so stubbornly allowed him to think her indifferent to him, and to believe her heart was all Archie’s? She could scarce keep her thoughts from straying at family prayers that evening, but when her father read the parable of the foolish virgins, Agnes gave a deep sigh and applied it, maiden-like, to her own case; it was too late and the door was shut. But youth, though it is easily dispirited, is also elastic, and Agnes could not be continually moping. She was ready to take such pleasures as came to her, and really enjoyed life, though she had her pensive moments when she had romantic dreams of dying young, of touching the heart of her loved one by going into a decline, but she was too healthily minded and too busy to allow these thoughts to recur very often. She found Carter Ritchie good company; he was so full of fun, so energetic and buoyant, and likewise so pleasure-loving that he was ready at any time to leave his work for a frolic, and at last Archie became possessed by the demon of jealousy, and glowered upon his sweetheart till she brought him to account. “What do you mean, Archie M’Clean, by looking at me as if you’d cast an evil eye upon me? What have I done that you should glower so?” “You’re naught but a shallow coquette,” said Archie, blurting out his grievance. “Have you any claim upon me, Archie M’Clean? Did I not tell you that I could not care for you as you chose I should? Have you any right to call me to account?” He confessed he had not, but she had encouraged him to believe she did care for him in times past, and he had told her he would not give her up. “I know you said that, but I have never deceived you, and I said I would marry you. I said that when I was but a slip of a girl; but even then I told you it would be only in case I did not see some one I liked better, and you were free to do likewise.” Archie’s face fell. “Ay, then, if ye have seen some one, it’s all over, and I’d as well take my way to Canonsburg as soon as I can, but it will be fey with me when I think o’ ye an’ that light-headed Ritchie, though I don’t want to part in anger, Agnes. We’re friends?”