ly, like a dumb beast trying to feel out his master's will
in his face. The evening was clear and the moon shining. As Dick sat at
his chamber-window, looking at the mountain-side, he saw a gray-dressed
figure flit between the trees and steal along the narrow path which led
upward. Elsie's pillow was unpressed that night, but she had not been
missed by the household,--for Dick knew enough to keep his own counsel.
The next morning she avoided him and went off early to school. It was
the same morning that the young master found the flower between the
leaves of his Virgil.

The girl got over her angry fit, and was pleasant enough with her cousin
for a few days after this; but she shunned rather than sought him. She
had taken a new interest in her books, and especially in certain poetical
readings which the master conducted with the elder scholars. This gave
Master Langdon a good chance to study her ways when her eye was on her
book, to notice the inflections of her voice, to watch for any expression
of her sentiments; for, to tell the truth, he had a kind of fear that the
girl had taken a fancy to him, and, though she interested him, he did not
wish to study her heart from the inside.

The more he saw her, the more the sadness of her beauty wrought upon him.
She looked as if she might hate, but could not love. She hardly smiled
at anything, spoke rarely, but seemed to feel that her natural power of
expression lay all in her bright eyes, the force of which so many had
felt, but none perhaps had tried to explain to themselves. A person
accustomed to watch the faces of those who were ailing in body or mind,
and to search in every line and tint for some underlying source of
disorder, could hardly help analyzing the impression such a face produced
upon him. The light of those beautiful eyes was like the lustre of ice;
in all her features there was nothing of that human warmth which shows
that sympathy has reached the soul beneath the mask of flesh it wears.
The look was that of remoteness, of utter isolation. There was in its
stony apathy, it seemed to him, the pathos which we find in the blind who
show no film or speck over the organs of sight; for Nature had meant her
to be lovely, and left out nothing but love. And yet the master could
not help feeling that some instinct was working in this girl which was in
some way leading her to seek his presence. She did not lift her
glittering eyes upon him as at first. It s