Though the rest of the family seemed to forget very soon the little episode that had been so excruciating to me, and so amusing to them, I do not think it was lost upon my aunt. I always found her looking at me very narrowly whenever Mr. Rutledge was mentioned, and she on more than one occasion, in my presence, took pains to speak of him in a way that seemed to put a greater distance than ever between us, of his age, his eccentricities, his reserve. My aunt might have saved herself the trouble. I "knew my place" by this time, and shrunk as naturally from meeting him now, as I had before been eager and forward. On the one or two occasions when I could not avoid encountering him, it had been in her presence, and I had been shy and cold to a degree that must have been unaccountable to him, if he had given the matter a thought, which I very much doubted. I had excused myself as hurriedly as possible, and slipped back to the study, glad to be by myself again, yet bitterly sorry, as soon as it was too late, that I had not staid where only I wished to be--where only I found any pleasure, if such a doubtful emotion indeed could be called pleasure. It was the nearest approach to it, however, that my life presented; it was what I looked forward to, spite of my good resolves from day to day; yet, when the wished-for pleasure came, with strange shyness and perverseness, I thrust it away out of my own reach, then cried passionately at the disappointment, and began to hope again. The most inexplicable and contradictory thing in all this world of contradictions, is a woman's heart, before experience has tutored it. The woman herself does not understand it. What wonder if its strange willfulness and sudden impulses hopelessly bewilder and mislead the one of all others whom she most desires to please, and for whom alone, if the truth were known, the foolish heart throbs and flutters and pines. CHAPTER XX. "Doth not the world show men a very Judas' part, and betray them unto Satan, saying, whom I kiss with a feigned sign of love, take them--torture them?" SUTTON. "Mamma says," drawled out Grace, sauntering into the study one snowy morning, as I sat busy at my German, "mamma says, that as you write a good hand, you may direct these cards for her, and she will excuse you to Mr. Waschlager, if you don't have time to finish your German before he comes." I could not help a slight exclamation of impatience as I relinquished my books, and took the long list of names and the basketful of blank envelopes that Grace handed me. "How glad I am that I don't write a nice hand!" she ejaculated, as she threw herself lazily into a chair by the window, and leaning on her elbow, gazed out into the streets, now "dumb with snow," but where, before an hour was over, the jingling of an occasional sleigh-bell would be but a prelude to the merry music with which, till the snow vanished, they were to resound.