Miss Evy was a thin, fragile woman, with a figure that had once been willowy, but was now angular; blue eyes that once were like forget-me-nots, contrasting with tender, coral lips and baby blond hair; but tears shed in secret had washed the blue from her eyes and the peachy bloom from her oval cheeks, until only a faint reminiscence remained of the beauty which had captivated Vivian Thomas' boyish fancy. One of the peculiarities of Vivian's fortune was that the women he had wooed and forsaken remained faithful to him till death, cherishing no resentment and seeking no retaliation; but, instead, biding the time when by some act of service they could prove the strength of an affection that always had in it an element of maternal fondness. Why some men whose paths through life are marked by the broken hearts of women should experience from those they injure the tenderness and leniency seldom or never accorded to better but rougher men is something only to be explained by the waywardness of feminine nature. The majority of women like to be martyred, but resent frank abuse. The weakly child of the flock easily converts his mother into a slave, even though she perceives through the veil of feebleness the force of egotism. And in the same way the man of soft manners, winning voice, and insinuating tongue, may play the tyrant at his pleasure, and be admired and adored by women whose slavishness is a conscious concession to some imagined delicacy that appeals to their maternal instinct. In the humble heart of Miss Evy her girlhood's hero had maintained his place, notwithstanding her conscientious efforts after Vivian's marriage to think of him as something entirely apart from her life. Thinking of him was a privilege she allowed herself under certain restrictions. She thought of him when she prayed, when she sang in the choir on Sunday and Wednesday nights, and when she worked in her flower-garden. Most of all then, for long ago he had been used to stop his horse and stand outside the low stone fence, with his arm through the bridle-rein, and talk with her in a playfully sentimental way that she had thought the prettiest sort of love-making. And so, to keep him out of her mind when she tended her spotted lilies and trained the purple wistaria, was as impossible as it would have been to avoid the connection between the sky and the gracious heaven lying beyond. It was an innocent indulgence that did not infringe upon the rights of Vivian's wife, and did no harm to the gentle woman herself; for it kept alive her faith in human nature and trust in the compensations Providence has in store for those who have been denied their heart's desire in this world. And these are feelings that die out in most of us under the scourge of disappointment and leave something worse than heartache in their room.