A dozen times in the course of the supper Jimmie assured himself that he did not care what was the opinion held of him by such as Annie Graham, while he as often changed his mind and knew that he did care, wondering what it was about her face which puzzled him so much. She looked a little like Tom’s wife, Mary, he thought, that is, as Mary had looked just before her departure for Charleston, when she bade him good-bye, whispering to him timidly of a world where she hoped to meet again the friends she loved so well. And as, whenever he thought of Mary, he felt that her angel presence was around him still, he now felt that another angel spirit looked out at him from the soft eyes of blue raised to his so seldom, and when raised withdrawn so quickly. What did she think of him? He would have given something to have known, but he was far from suspecting the truth or guessing what Annie felt, as she saw upon his face the lines of dissipation, and thought of the debasing scenes through which he must have passed since the days of auld lang syne, when, with the little Pequot of New London, he sat upon the rocks and watched the tide come in, telling her how, on the morrow night, his own fanciful little boat, named for her should bear them across the placid waters of the bay to where the green hill lay sleeping in the summer moonlight. The Pequot’s reply had been that the morrow was the Sabbath, and not even the pleasure of a sail with him could tempt her to steal God’s time, and appropriate it to such a purpose. He had called her a little Puritan then, asking where she learned so strict a creed, and adding, “but I half believe you’re right, and if I’d known you sooner I should have been a better boy;” then kissing her blushing cheek, he had led her from the rocks over which the waves were breaking now, and that was the last the Pequot ever saw of him. There was no sail upon the bay, no more watching for the ebb and flow of the evening tide, no walks on the long piazza, or strolls upon the beach, nothing but news one night that the handsome, saucy-eyed boy was gone to his home in Boston, leaving no message or word of explanation for her, the little Pequot, whose step was slower for a few days, and whose headache was not feigned, as the harsh aunt said it was, when she refused to join the revellers in the parlor, and dance with the grey-haired man, four times her age, who sought her for his partner. They had not met since then till now, and Annie struggled hard to keep back the tears as she remembered all that had come to her since that summer at New London—remembered the childish fancy which died out so fast, and the later love which crowned her early girlhood, finding its full fruition at the marriage altar, and twining itself so closely around the fibres of her heart, that when it was torn away, it left them sore and bleeding with pain at every pore.