Lottie looked curiously at the object of her practical jest. The words of the pastor's wife seemed to have drawn his thoughts away from the speaker and herself, and fixed them on his future work and its results. It is in such moments of abstraction--of self-forgetfulness, when one's mind is dwelling on life's purposes and aims--that the spirit shines through the face, as through a transparency, and the true character is seen. Lottie saw Hemstead's face grow so noble and manly, so free from every trace of the meanness of egotism and selfishness, that in the depths of her soul she respected him as she had never any man before. Instinctively she placed Julian De Forrest, the rich and elegant idler, beside this earnest man, self-consecrated to the highest effort, and for the first time her soul revolted from her cousin with something like disgust. What she had imagined became real at that moment, and De Forrest appeared, looking bored and uneasy. "I have found you at last," he said. "We became so wedged in the parlor that there was no getting out, but now they have completed the laborious task of counting a sum that a bank clerk would run over in two minutes, and it is to be announced with a final flourish of trumpets. Then the stingy clodhoppers that you have inveigled into doing something that they will repent of with groanings that cannot be uttered to-morrow will go home resolving to pinch and save till they make good what they have given." He then added carelessly to Mrs. Dlimm, not waiting for an introduction, "I am surprised that you and your husband are willing to stay among such a people." Before she could answer, he said to Lottie, "Are you ready to go home? Harcourt and Addie say we ought to start at once." Lottie was provoked at his rudeness, and furtively watched Mrs. Dlimm's face, to see what impression he made upon her. Indeed her face was a study for a moment as she measured De Forrest's proportions with a slow, sweeping glance, which he thought one of admiration. But, instead of turning contemptuously or resentfully away, her face was pitiful. They were now summoned to hear the result, but Lottie found opportunity to whisper to Mrs. Dlimm, "What do you think of him?" "I don't know what to think. It is painfully evident that he is not a man." Mrs. Dlimm's verdict had a weight with Lottie that she would hardly have believed possible a few hours before. There was a quaint simplicity and sincerity about her, an unworldliness, that gave her words something of the authority of the other world. The abstraction that had been on Hemstead's face passed to Lottie's, and she heard with inattentive ear the young farmer say with hearty emphasis, "We present you, as an expression of our good-will, with two hundred and fifty dollars."