The thought brought him back to the central point inher mind

　　The thought brought him back to the central point inher mind, and she strayed away from the conjecturesroused by Liff Hyatt's presence. Speculationsconcerning the past could not hold her long when thepresent was so rich, the future so rosy, and whenLucius Harney, a stone's throw away, was bending overhis sketch-book, frowning, calculating, measuring, andthen throwing his head back with the sudden smile thathad shed its brightness over everything.
　　She scrambled to her feet, but as she did so she sawhim coming up the pasture and dropped down on the grassto wait. When he was drawing and measuring one of "hishouses," as she called them,ugg bailey button triplet 1873 boots, she often strayed away byherself into the woods or up the hillside. It waspartly from shyness that she did so: from a sense ofinadequacy that came to her most painfully when hercompanion,UGG Clerance, absorbed in his job, forgot her ignoranceand her inability to follow his least allusion, andplunged into a monologue on art and life. To avoid theawkwardness of listening with a blank face, and also toescape the surprised stare of the inhabitants of thehouses before which he would abruptly pull up theirhorse and open his sketch-book, she slipped away tosome spot from which, without being seen, she couldwatch him at work, or at least look down on the househe was drawing. She had not been displeased, at first,to have it known to North Dormer and the neighborhoodthat she was driving Miss Hatchard's cousin about thecountry in the buggy he had hired of lawyer Royall.
　　She had always kept to herself, contemptuously alooffrom village love-making, without exactly knowingwhether her fierce pride was due to the sense of hertainted origin, or whether she was reserving herselffor a more brilliant fate. Sometimes she envied theother girls their sentimental preoccupations, theirlong hours of inarticulate philandering with one of thefew youths who still lingered in the village; but whenshe pictured herself curling her hair or putting a newribbon on her hat for Ben Fry or one of the Sollas boysthe fever dropped and she relapsed into indifference.
　　Now she knew the meaning of her disdains andreluctances. She had learned what she was worth whenLucius Harney,shox torch 2, looking at her for the first time, hadlost the thread of his speech, and leaned reddening onthe edge of her desk. But another kind of shyness hadbeen born in her: a terror of exposing to vulgar perilsthe sacred treasure of her happiness. She was notsorry to have the neighbors suspect her of "going with"a young man from the city; but she did not want itknown to all the countryside how many hours of the longJune days she spent with him. What she most feared wasthat the inevitable comments should reach Mr. Royall.
　　Charity was instinctively aware that few thingsconcerning her escaped the eyes of the silent man underwhose roof she lived; and in spite of the latitudewhich North Dormer accorded to courting couples she hadalways felt that, on the day when she showed too open apreference, Mr. Royall might, as she phrased it, makeher "pay for it,link." How, she did not know; and her fearwas the greater because it was undefinable. If she hadbeen accepting the attentions of one of the villageyouths she would have been less apprehensive: Mr.