a look of contempt and of something like triumph upon
her face. Her father saw that her cousin had become odious to her: He
knew well, by every change of her countenance, by her movements, by every
varying curve of her graceful figure, the transitions front passion to
repose, from fierce excitement to the dull languor which often succeeded
her threatening paroxysms.

She remained looking out at the window. A group of white fan-tailed
pigeons had lighted on the green plot before it and clustered about one
of their companions who lay on his back, fluttering in a strange way,
with outspread wings and twitching feet. Elsie uttered a faint cry;
these were her special favorites and often fed from her hand. She threw
open the long window, sprang out, caught up the white fantail, and held
it to her bosom. The bird stretched himself out, and then lay still,
with open eyes, lifeless. She looked at him a moment, and, sliding in
through the open window and through the study, sought her own apartment,
where she locked herself in, and began to sob and moan like those that
weep. But the gracious solace of tears seemed to be denied her, and her
grief, like her anger, was a dull ache, longing, like that, to finish
itself with a fierce paroxysm, but wanting its natural outlet.

This seemingly trifling incident of the death of her favorite appeared to
change all the current of her thought. Whether it were the sight of the
dying bird, or the thought that her own agency might have beep concerned
in it, or some deeper grief, which took this occasion to declare
itself,--some dark remorse or hopeless longing,--whatever it might be,
there was an unwonted tumult in her soul. To whom should she go in her
vague misery? Only to Him who knows all His creatures' sorrows, and
listens to the faintest human cry. She knelt, as she had been taught to
kneel from her childhood, and tried to pray. But her thoughts refused to
flow in the language of supplication. She could not plead for herself as
other women plead in their hours of anguish. She rose like one who
should stoop to drink, and find dust in the place of water. Partly from
restlessness, partly from an attraction she hardly avowed to herself, she
followed her usual habit and strolled listlessly along to the school.

Of course everybody at the Institute was full of the terrible adventure
of the preceding evening. Mr. Bernard felt poorly enough; but he had
made it a point to show him