are often confounded with those
who step out of it through strength of the intellectual ones.

The girls kept coming in, one after another, or in pairs or groups, until
the schoolroom was nearly full. Then there was a little pause, and a
light step was heard in the passage. The lady-teacher's eyes turned to
the door, and the master's followed them in the same direction.

A girl of about seventeen entered. She was tall and slender, but
rounded, with a peculiar undulation of movement, such as one sometimes
sees in perfectly untutored country-girls, whom Nature, the queen of
graces, has taken in hand, but more commonly in connection with the very
highest breeding of the most thoroughly trained society. She was a
splendid scowling beauty, black-browed, with a flash of white teeth which
was always like a surprise when her lips parted. She wore a checkered
dress, of a curious pattern, and a camel's-hair scarf twisted a little
fantastically about her. She went to her seat, which she had moved a
short distance apart from the rest, and, sitting down, began playing
listlessly with her gold chain, as was a common habit with her, coiling
it and uncoiling it about her slender wrist, and braiding it in with her
long, delicate fingers. Presently she looked up. Black, piercing eyes,
not large,--a low forehead, as low as that of Clytie in the Townley
bust,--black hair, twisted in heavy braids,--a face that one could not
help looking at for its beauty, yet that one wanted to look away from for
something in its expression, and could not for those diamond eyes. They
were fixed on the lady-teacher now. The latter turned her own away, and
let them wander over the other scholars. But they could not help coming
back again for a single glance at the wild beauty. The diamond eyes were
on her still. She turned the leaves of several of her books, as if in
search of some passage, and, when she thought she had waited long enough
to be safe, once more stole a quick look at the dark girl. The diamond
eyes were still upon her. She put her kerchief to her forehead, which
had grown slightly moist; she sighed once, almost shivered, for she felt
cold; then, following some ill-defined impulse, which she could not
resist, she left her place and went to the young girl's desk.

"What do you want of me, Elsie Venner?" It was a strange question to
put, for the girl had not signified that she wished the teacher to come
to her.

"Nothing," she said.