"Yes, let me see it," she said. "You are surely not afraid of me!" and she persisted in her entreaties until he gave it into her hands, and then joined his grandfather, while she returned to her room, and striking a light, abandoned herself to the reading of the valedictory; and as she read it seemed even to her that she had heard some portion of it before. "Yes, I have!" she exclaimed, as she came upon a strikingly expressed and peculiar idea. "I have read that in print," and in Jessie’s heart there was a sore spot, for the losing confidence in Walter was terrible to her. "He is not strictly honorable," she said, and laying her face upon the roll of paper, she cried to think how she had been deceived. The next morning Walter was not long in observing her cold distant manner, and he accordingly became as cold and formal toward her, addressing her as Miss Graham, when he spoke to her at all, and after breakfast was over, going to the village, where he remained until long past the dinner hour, hearing that which made him in no hurry to return home and make his peace with the little dark-eyed beauty. Everybody was talking of Miss Graham’s city beau, who had taken her to ride so often, and who, when joked by his familiar landlord, had partially admitted that an engagement actually existed between them. "So you’ve lost her, sleek and clean," said the talkative Joslyn to Walter, who replied that "it was difficult losing what one never had," and said distinctly that "he did not aspire to the honor of Miss Graham’s hand." But whether he did or not, the story he had heard was not calculated to improve his state of mind, and his dejection was plainly visible upon his face when he at last reached home. "Jessie was up among the pines," Aunt Debby said, advising him "to join her and cheer her up a bit, for she seemed desput low spirited since Mr. Bellenger went away." Had Aunt Debby wished to keep Walter from Jessie, she could not have devised a better plan than this, for the high spirited young man had no intention of intruding upon a grief caused by William Bellenger’s absence, and hour after hour Jessie sat alone among the pines, starting at every sound, and once, when sure a footstep was near, hiding behind a rock, "so as to make him think she wasn’t there." Then, when the footstep proved to be a rabbit’s tread, she crept back to her seat upon the grass, and pouted because it was not Walter. "He might know I’d be lonesome," she said, "after receiving so much attention, and he ought to entertain me a little, if only to pay for all father has done for him. If there is anything I dislike, it is ingratitude," and having reached this point, Jessie burst into tears, though why she should cry, she could not tell. She only knew that she was very warm and very uncomfortable, and that it did her good to cry, so she lay with her face in the grass, while the rabbit came several times very near, and at last fled away as a heavier, firmer step approached.