So, up on the farm, as her fright about her health subsided, poor Nellie raged against her benefactor and her cruel fate. She fell into fits of weeping, or, what was worse to the quiet husband and wife in whose charge she was, into long silences, broken only by fitful flashes of black temper. Yet in spite of this, her bodily health increased. Very likely there would have been open rebellion, and a break for liberty by midsummer, if an unexpected interest had not come into her life. Two students, with their tutor, came to camp out near the farm; and after passing them once or twice in the road, and giggling with them over the posting of a letter in the office, poor Nellie grew better tempered. She frizzed her hair with keener enjoyment, and practiced airs and graces before her glass all the long hot forenoons; and in the afternoons walked in to the village on the remote chance of meeting the two boys. She did not see them often, but to know they were near gave her something to think about in the deadly monotony of farm life, and she was much happier. On the rare occasions of their meeting she would roll her eyes, and talk in her simpering, nasal voice of the weather, or the novel she had been reading, or how her “guardian” had sent her into the country for her health. The boys said to each other that she was pretty, and ripping good fun; and used to laugh over her silliness with their tutor. They were too busy and too wholesomely happy to give very much thought to her. Thus the summer passed. The health which Sara Wharton so earnestly desired had returned, temporarily at least. When at last the first of September came, and Miss Wharton’s letter arrived to say she might come home,--such a gentle, friendly, sympathetic letter,--Nellie was wild with delight. She could hardly remember to say good-by to the kind people who had looked after her for the last few months; she almost forgot the boys; she was tremulous with joy. “Oh, I’m so _glad_ to go back--oh, I hate, hate, _hate_ the country!” she kept saying; while the husband and wife looked at each other wonderingly. So, strengthened and invigorated, panting for excitement, unchecked by any moral perceptions, by gratitude, by love, even by fear (now that she was well again),--she came back to Mercer. VI One night in December, Sara Wharton, coming home from a dinner, was told that Dr. Morse was waiting for her in the library. She went in at once, pulling off her long gloves, and with her white cloak falling back from her pretty shoulders. She had not seen the doctor since that talk about Nellie, and she had forgotten her indignation with him. She had heard too much of his goodness among the poor people to harbor resentment. “Oh, I am so sorry to be so late,” she said. “Have you been waiting very long? Oh, this room is cold! Why haven’t they kept the fire up?” She turned, with a pretty, hospitable impulse to summon a servant, but Dr. Morse stopped her with a gesture.