"Since when, Bessie?" "Since he loved me." A strange sort of wonder crept over Abigail Williams. She looked upon her cousin with vague apprehension. The word love was a new thing to her; it had scarcely yet entered into her dreamy life. Elizabeth smiled at first amid her blushes, but as Abby kept gazing upon her with parted lips and that wonder in her eyes, her lips began to tremble, and the warm color ebbed away from her face. "I forget," she said, deprecatingly, "you have not heard any thing about him. I could not write, and even my father knew nothing till he came to Boston after me. But oh! if you could see him, Abby! If you could hear him speak; or read his beautiful poetry that he writes; it would not seem strange that I love him so much." "Then you have been treacherous also? You love some one more than me?" "Forgive me, forgive me," pleaded Elizabeth, "I could not help it. We were in the same house--he was like a son to Lady Phipps." "Better than your father, perhaps," continued Abby, pondering over this new subject in her mind, heedless of the tears and blushes with which she was regarded. "I have heard of such things, but never expected them to come so close. So you love some one better than us all, Elizabeth Parris?" "Forgive me, dear cousin! Why are you so angry?" "Angry? Oh! nothing of the kind. I only wonder how any one can look forward, when the dead will not rest--how it is the privilege of one human being to love, and the duty of another to hate!" "The duty of another to hate!--why, cousin, there is--there can be no such duty. God is love, the Bible tells us so; and oh! when the heart is full of this blessed, blessed feeling, one sees him everywhere. Don't talk of hate, it is a new word between us two." Abigail Williams attempted to smile, but only a quiver of the pale lips followed the effort. Still she grew more composed, and gently won her warm-hearted cousin back to bright thoughts again, by a few questions. "His name? Oh, yes--his name is Norman--Norman Lovel--he is the private secretary of Gov. Phipps, who treats him like a son. He lives in the house, and but for his name you would never believe that he was in no way related to the governor. Still he is only a stranger, recommended by some friend in London, and singular enough don't know his own parents. Never saw them, or anybody that he knew was related to him in his whole life. But what difference does that make, when everybody else almost worships him?" "And you among the rest?" "I most of all," answered Elizabeth, bathed in a glow of crimson, from the white forehead to the heaving bosom. "And this is happiness, I suppose?" "Happiness? That is what seems strange to me, when life is full of glow, and I can hardly breathe from the rich swell of a heart that seems ready to break with joy, an exquisite pain creeps in, and I know by it that happiness can mount no farther!" "But there must be a cause for this pain!"