Go away! No indeed; she laughed bitterly when she thought of the commotion that would result from the mentioning such a plan. St. John might walk in any day, and say he was going on a journey. No one would question his right to go, or his right to decline giving any reasons for so going. He was seven years younger than she was, but he was free. She must account for all her goings, her doings; even the people in the village would sit in judgment on her, if she did anything that was not clearly explained to them and proved expedient. No--she was tied, bound to Yellowcoats. All their plans were laid to remain at home for the winter. Since St. John had come to the parish, they had decided it was unnecessary to make their annual change; Missy had not cared for the winter in town, Mrs. Varian had been glad to be let off from it, Aunt Harriet had submitted to give it up. So here she was to stay, and here it was possible the Andrews' would stay, and here she must daily see the children and pass the house, and be reminded that she had been insulted, and had been a fool. It would be the village talk. All her past dignity and her grand disdain of lovers would pass for nothing. She had never entered the lists with other young women; she had prided herself on her determination not to marry. "I am not in commission," she would say loftily to the younger girls, making the most of her age. The few suitors who, so far, had come to her, had been detestable to her. She did not deserve much credit for rejecting them, but she took a good deal to herself, feeling sure that she would, in the same way, have discarded princes. Of course, she had had her dreams about true love, but she had early decided that that was not to come to her, and that she had a different sort of life to live. Being very fond of plans and arrangements of all kinds, it was a great satisfaction to her to feel she was building up the sort of life that she was intended for, that she was daily adding to its usefulness and symmetry. My will be done, she was saying, unconsciously, in her daily thought, if not in her morning and evening prayer. Yes, it was a very beautiful, a very noble life she was constructing, very devoid of self, she thought. She was living for others; was not that fine? She was quite above the petty ambitions and humiliations of her sex. She did not mean to marry, in deference to the world's opinion, or in terror of its scorn. All the same, she knew very well people held her very high, and were not ignorant that she could have married well if she had chosen. She did not think that this was of any importance to her, till she found what pain it gave her to think that people would now be of a different mind. Had it come to this, that it could be said she was only too ready to fall into the arms of a month-old widower, stout and elderly! Yes, that was what the people in the village--the gentlemen going down in the cars, the ladies in their morning drives--would say.