"Oh, miss," said the woman, dropping her gossip, and returning to her gratitude (which was genuine)--"oh, miss, mayn't I know your name? I want to put it in me prayers. There was just three cents in the house, miss, when you came; and Lyddy she couldn't eat the last meal I got for her--a cracker and a piece of mackerel." "You can pray for me without a name," said Eve, going out. She felt as though there were hot coals in her throat, she could scarcely breathe. She went towards the forest, and, entering it by a cart-track, walked rapidly on. Rose Bonham was the daughter of the butter-woman. Bonham had a forest farm about five miles from Port aux Pins on the road to Betsy Lake, and his wife kept Paul's cottage supplied with butter. Eve had seen the daughter several times; she was a very beautiful girl. Eve and Cicely thought her bold; but the women who eat the butter are apt to think so of those who bring it, if the bringers have sparkling eyes, peach-like complexions, and the gait of Hebe. And Paul himself had suggested the spending the night there--an entirely unnecessary thing--under the pretence of gaining thereby an earlier start in the morning. She came to a little pool of clear water; pausing beside it, half unconsciously, she beheld the reflection of her face in its mirror, and something seemed to say to her, "What is your education, your culture, your senseless pride worth, when compared with the peach-like bloom of that young girl?" Her own image looked up at her, pale, cold, and stern; it did not seem to her to have a trace of beauty. She took a stone, and, casting it in the pool, shattered the picture. "I wish I were beautiful beyond words! I _could_ be beautiful if I had everything; if nothing but the finest lace ever touched me, if I never raised my hand to do anything for myself, if I had only dainty and delicate and beautiful things about me, I should be beautiful--I know I should. Bad women have those things, they say; why haven't they the best of it?" She began to walk on again. She had not given much thought to the direction her steps were taking; now it came to her that the road to Lake Betsy, and therefore to Bonham's, was not far away, and she crossed the wood towards it. When she reached it, she turned towards Bonham's. Five miles. It was now after five o'clock. When she came in sight of the low roof and scattered out-buildings a sudden realization of what she was doing came to her, and she stopped. Why was she there? If they should see her, any of them, what would they think? What could she say? As though they were already upon her, she took refuge hastily behind the high bushes with which the road was bordered. "Oh, what have I come here for? Humiliating! Let me get back home!--let me get back home!" She returned towards Port aux Pins by the fields, avoiding the road; the shadows were dense now; it was almost night.