“Oh yes; of course! And I liked him better than I used to. He is very good, and if Madeline didn't have to go so far West to live! He will know how to appreciate her, and there are not many who can do that! Her father thinks he has a great deal of ability. Yes, if Madeline _had_ to get married!” She talked as if convincing and consoling herself, and there was an accent of loneliness in it all that pierced Lemuel's preoccupation; he had hardly noted how almost pathetically glad she was to see him. “You'll miss her here,” he ventured. “Oh, I don't dare to think of it,” cried the girl. “I don't know what I shall do! When I first saw you, just now, it brought up Madeline and last winter so that it seemed too much to bear!” They had walked out of the garden across Charles Street, and were climbing the slope of Beacon Street Mall, in the Common. “I suppose,” she continued, “the only way will be to work harder, and try to forget it. They wanted me to go out and stay with them; but of course I couldn't. I shall work, and I shall read. I shall not find another Madeline Swan! You must have been reading a great deal this summer, Mr. Barker,” she said, in turning upon him from her bereavement. “Have you seen any of the old boarders? Or Mrs. Harmon? I shall never have another winter like that at the poor old St. Albans!” Lemuel made what answer he could. There was happiness enough in merely being with her to have counterbalanced all the pain he was suffering; and when she made him partner of her interests and associations, and appealed to their common memories in confidence of his sympathy, his heavy heart stirred with strange joy. He had supposed that Berry must have warned her against him; but she was treating him as if he had not. Perhaps he had not, and perhaps he had done so, and this was her way of showing that she did not believe it. He tried to think so; he knew it was a subterfuge, but he lingered in it with a fleeting, fearful pleasure. They had crossed from the Common and were walking up under the lindens of Chestnut Street, and from time to time they stopped, in the earnestness of their parley, and stood talking, and then loitered on again in the summer security from oversight which they were too rapt to recognise. They reached the top of the hill, and came to a door where she stopped. He fell back a pace. “Good-bye--” It was eternal loss, but it was escape. She smiled in timorous hesitation. “Won't you come in? And I will get Mr. Berry's letter.” She opened the door with a latch-key, and he followed her within; a servant-girl came half-way up the basement stairs to see who it was, and then went down. She left him in the dim parlour a moment, while she went to get the letter. When she returned, “I have a little room for my work at the top of the house,” she said, “but it will never be like the St. Albans. There's no one else here yet, and it's pretty lonesome--without Madeline.”