fluence or other, and
Mr. Bernard had seen enough of the strange impression Elsie sometimes
produced to wish this young girl to be relieved from it, whatever it was.
He turned toward Elsie and looked at her in such a way as to draw her
eyes upon him. Then he looked steadily and calmly into them. It was a
great effort, for some perfectly inexplicable reason. At one instant he
thought he could not sit where he was; he must go and speak to Elsie.
Then he wanted to take his eyes away from hers; there was something
intolerable in the light that came from them. But he was determined to
look her down, and he believed he could do it, for he had seen her
countenance change more than once when he had caught her gaze steadily
fixed on him. All this took not minutes, but seconds. Presently she
changed color slightly,--lifted her head, which was inclined a little to
one side,--shut and opened her eyes two or three times, as if they had
been pained or wearied,--and turned away baffled, and shamed, as it would
seem, and shorn for the time of her singular and formidable or at least
evil-natured power of swaying the impulses of those around her.

It takes too long to describe these scenes where a good deal of life is
concentrated into a few silent seconds. Mr. Richard Veneer had sat
quietly through it all, although this short pantomime had taken place
literally before his face. He saw what was going on well enough, and
understood it all perfectly well. Of course the schoolmaster had been
trying to make Elsie jealous, and had succeeded. The little schoolgirl
was a decoy-duck,--that was all. Estates like the Dudley property were
not to be had every day, and no doubt the Yankee usher was willing to
take some pains to make sure of Elsie. Does n't Elsie look savage? Dick
involuntarily moved his chair a little away from her, and thought he felt
a pricking in the small white scars on his wrist. A dare-devil fellow,
but somehow or other this girl had taken strange hold of his imagination,
and he often swore to himself, that, when he married her, he would carry
a loaded revolver with him to his bridal chamber.

Mrs. Blanche Creamer raged inwardly at first to find herself between the
two old gentlemen of the party. It very soon gave her great comfort,
however, to see that Marilla, Rowens had just missed it in her
calculations, and she chuckled immensely to find Dudley Veneer devoting
himself chiefly to Helen Darley. If the Rowens wo