The constraint which had been put upon both of them by the necessities of the business which had called them to the village, and the presence of other people wherever they went, for the officious but well-meaning landlady had frequently interrupted the privacy of the parlor even, had been the strongest force in developing the growing passions in their hearts. Emily was a simple-minded maiden, with all the attributes of a very old-fashioned age. She had no mission to reform this world, which indeed she had found most sweet and fair, and sweeter and fairer that day than ever before; she stood for no so-called modern idea; she had no deep plan or mighty purpose for the amelioration of mankind,--or womankind either; she did not aim at the achievement of great results, the doing of mighty deeds. The complexities of her character did not manifest themselves in these ways. Woman's sphere for her, if she thought of it specifically at all, was a very simple and a very old thing. To love and to be loved, to be first a faithful, happy wife, and second, please God, a wise, devoted mother, was the sum of her ambition. There were no young men with whom she came in contact who could measure up to the standard of her social and intellectual requirements, and the chances that any would present themselves had been exceedingly small. So she had represented in her life a hope deferred, but without being heart-sick with the delay; she was of so sane, so healthy, and so happy a disposition that she had been saved all that. With the optimism of youth she had confidently expected that some day the prince would arrive, and when he came, together hand in hand they would go "over the hills and far away, to that new land which is the old." And the portals of that undiscovered country were now opening before her delighted vision. Barely out of her teens, she had not grown impatient in her dreaming,--life had been too sweet and pleasant for that,--but the thoughtful and somewhat lonely years had made her ready, and it was no wonder that at the touch she yielded. When Revere came to her out of the deep, cast up at her feet by the waves of the sea, as it were, he fitted into anticipation already old. He represented the realization of her maidenly desires and her womanly hopes. That she should fall in love with him was entirely natural and quite to be expected, especially since he was blessed with a personality at once strong, lovable, and charming. The reserve and the calmness of Revere's long line of Boston ancestry had been tempered, modified, brightened, by his sailor life and by his intimate contact with great and heroic men in the war which was just over. Frank, genial, generous, and not without a certain high-bred distinction in his manner, and blessed with a sufficiency of manly good looks, he might well have hoped to win any woman's heart.