Nina

Three or four times Edith went to Grassy Spring, seeing nothing of
the mysterious occupant of the Den, hearing nothing of her, and
she began to think she might have returned to Worcester. Many
times she was on the point of questioning Arthur, but from what
had passed, she knew how disagreeable the subject was to him, and
she generously forbore.

"I think he might tell me, anyway," she said to herself, half
poutingly, when, one morning near the latter part of April, she
rode slowly toward Grassy Spring.

Their quarrel, if quarrel it could be called, had been made up,
or, rather, tacitly forgotten, and Arthur more than once had
cursed himself for having, in a moment of excitement, asked her to
marry Richard Harrington. While praying to be delivered from
temptation he was constantly keeping his eyes fixed upon the
forbidden fruit, longing for it more and move, and feeling how
worthless life would be to him without it.

Still, by a mighty effort, he restrained himself from doing or saying aught which
could be constrained into expressions of love, and their
interviews were much like those which had preceded his last visit
to Worcester. People were beginning to talk about him and his
beautiful pupil, but leading the isolated life he did, it came not
to his ears. Grace indeed, might have enlightened both himself and
Edith with regard to the village gossip, but looking upon the
latter as her rival, and desiring greatly that she should marry
Arthur, she forebore from communicating to either of them anything
which would be likely to retard an affair she fancied was
progressing famously.