When she returned to the house, she was pale and
weary, but capable of responding to Betty Rambo's constant
cheerfulness. The next day she left for the city, without having
seen Leonard Clare again.
II.
Henry Rambo married, and brought a new mistress to the farm-house.
Betty married, and migrated to a new home in another part of
the State. Leonard Clare went back to his trade, and returned no
more in harvest-time. So the pleasant farm by the Brandywine,
having served its purpose as a background, will be seen no more in
this history.
Miss Bartram's inmost life, as a woman, was no longer the same.
The point of view from which she had beheld the world was shifted,
and she was obliged to remodel all her feelings and ideas to
conform to it. But the process was gradual, and no one stood near
enough to her to remark it. She was occasionally suspected of that
"eccentricity" which, in a woman of five-and-twenty, is looked upon
as the first symptom of a tendency to old-maidenhood, but which is
really the sign of an earnest heart struggling with the questions
of life.
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