People talked much about Submit’s patient drudgery, and felt for her the resentment which she did not feel for herself. “It is a shame the way they make that poor girl do all the work to keep her sister in idleness!” said they. They began to call Persis in derision “The Buckley Lady.” Poor Persis Buckley, shut out of the free air and away from all the mates of her youth, was leading the life of a forlorn princess in a fairy tale. She would have given all the money which her brother Ichabod brought her for his privilege of a cruise over the wild seas. Year after year she waited in her prison, cast about and bound, body and spirit, by the will and ambition of her parents, like steel cobwebs, for the prince who never came. At first the romance of it all had appealed to her childish imagination. When the high destiny which awaited her had been disclosed, her heart leaped. She had been amused and pleased. She liked to watch out for that grand coach and four. When she remembered the gay blue flash of that grand gentleman’s eyes she blushed, and laughed to herself. But after a while all that failed. She did not grow incredulous, for she had a simple and long-suffering faith in her parents, but quietly and secretly frightened at the prospect before her. Poor Persis Buckley sometimes felt herself turn fairly cold with dread at the thought of entering that splendid coach and driving away forever out of her old life at that strange gentleman’s side. He became to her as cold and formless as a moving column of mist on the marsh, and even the dreams which sprang of themselves in her girlish heart could not invest him with love and life again. She did not dare confide her fears to her mother. Sometimes her mother filled her with a vague alarm. Sarah Buckley in ten years grew old, and the eagerness in her face waxed so bright and sharp that one shrank before it involuntarily, as before some blinding on-coming headlight of spirit. All those years she waited and watched and listened for that grand coach and four which would bring her fortune in her daughter’s. All the ambition of her earthly life, largely balked for herself, had centred in this. Her lot in the world had been to tread out a ceaseless round of sordid toil in her poor little home on the stormy coast, but her beautiful daughter could take a flight above it, and something of herself could follow her. She never gave up, although year after year she watched and listened in vain; but finally her body failed under this long strain of the spirit. When Persis was twenty-three her mother died, after a short illness. Then Persis found her father as keen a guardian as her mother had been. Sarah had given him her farewell charges, and during her lifetime had imbued his nervous receptive nature with a goodly portion of her own spirit.