Now he felt sure that he should live to be a hundred years old; should live by very help of the apathy into which he had sunk.

Externally, he seemed very little changed,--a trifle quieter, perhaps, and gentler.
His mother sometimes said to herself,-- "Steve is really getting old very fast for so young a man;" but she was content with the change.

It seemed to bring them nearer together, and made her feel more at ease as to the possibility of his falling in love.

Her old suspicions and jealousies of Mercy had died out root and branch, within three months after her departure.

Stephen's unhesitating assurance to her that he did not expect to write to Mercy had settled the question in her mind once for all.