Peter had no place in his life for the little attentions that Lucy liked to receive. She often thought him cold; for, having once said that he loved her, he did not repeat the declaration, and she wanted him to tell her every day. She missed the fond speeches that Joel had been so ready to make; her eyes never brightened now to hear themselves extolled; her cheeks never blushed to hear their own praises. Such light language had rarely been on Peter's tongue, even when he played with her in the forest, before he thought of marriage. Having been made his wife, she was on a different footing: she was as the apple of his eye; she was the woman he had enthroned, and he treated her with a dignity befitting her position and his own. Alas! he expected from her a seriousness she could not give! Neither would she enter into his pleasures--she thought them low, poor Lucy! To gossip with Jake, the rat-catcher; to make a pet of a dancing bear; to wrestle on the green--were these things not low? Joel had never done them. No sooner had Lucy allowed her mind to dwell upon such thoughts, than she began to be restless and dissatisfied. Then Joel's letter came, many months after it had been written. She read it through and put it away with a few tears, meaning never to look at it again, as a virtuous wife should do. But she was already regretting her marriage, regarding it as bondage, and so she drew the letter from its hiding place and got into the habit of reading it often. She found in it all that she desired--devotion, adoration, repentance; and she believed that if it had only come a few months earlier, the whole course of events would have been altered. She wrote to him, after a time, telling him of her marriage, and a good deal about her deeper thoughts. But no answer came, and she wondered if he had received her letter. Mally Ray, his old nurse, heard from him now and again, and he sent her money; then he disappeared once more into the wilderness. Peter's own feelings were poignant. Did he think that he had been tricked? Who can tell, for he said nothing? Like his old father and mother he hid his disappointment, and hid it better. He set himself, mind and will, to bring about a happier understanding between Lucy and himself. Had it not been for the fatal letter he might have achieved it, but a subtle influence, which never showed itself, yet was none the less real, frustrated all his endeavours. So the seasons ran on, and now Mistress Lynn wanted but one more year to make her a hundred years old.