and all at once I would see her grow pale and moist, and sigh, and
move round uneasily, and turn towards Elsie, and perhaps get up and go to
her, or else have slight spasmodic movements that looked like
hysterics;--do you believe in the evil eye, Doctor?"

"Mr. Langdon," the Doctor said, solemnly, "there are strange things about
Elsie Veneer,--very strange things. This was what I wanted to speak to
you about. Let me advise you all to be very patient with the girl, but
also very careful. Her love is not to be desired, and "--he spoke in a
lower tone--"her hate is to be dreaded. Do you think she has any special
fancy for anybody else in the school besides Miss Darley?"

Mr. Bernard could not stand the old Doctor's spectacled eyes without
betraying a little of the feeling natural to a young man to whom a home
question involving a possible sentiment is put suddenly.

"I have suspected," he said,--"I have had a kind of feeling--that
she--Well, come, Doctor,--I don't know that there 's any use in
disguising the matter,--I have thought Elsie Veneer had rather a fancy
for somebody else,--I mean myself."

There was something so becoming in the blush with which the young man
made this confession, and so manly, too, in the tone with which he spoke,
so remote from any shallow vanity, such as young men who are incapable of
love are apt to feel, when some loose tendril of a woman's fancy which a
chance wind has blown against them twines about them for the want of
anything better, that the old Doctor looked at him admiringly, and could
not help thinking that it was no wonder any young girl should be pleased
with him.

"You are a man of nerve, Mr. Langdon?" said the Doctor.

"I thought so till very lately," he replied. "I am not easily
frightened, but I don't know but I might be bewitched or magnetized, or
whatever it is when one is tied up and cannot move. I think I can find
nerve enough, however, if there is any special use you want to put it
to."

"Let me ask you one more question, Mr. Langdon. Do you find yourself
disposed to take a special interest in Elsie,--to fall in love with her,
in a word? Pardon me, for I do not ask from curiosity, but a much more
serious motive."

"Elsie interests me," said the young man, "interests me strangely. She
has a wild flavor in her character which is wholly different from that of
any human creature I ever saw. She has marks of genius, poetic or
dramatic,--I hardly know which.