awed as they
had never been before by the shadows that passed over it.

One of these girls was more strongly arrested by Elsie's look than the
others. This was a delicate, pallid creature, with a high forehead, and
wide-open pupils, which looked as if they could take in all the shapes
that flit in what, to common eyes, is darkness,--a girl said to be
clairvoyant under certain influences. In the recess, as it was called,
or interval of suspended studies in the middle of the forenoon, this girl
carried her autograph-book,--for she had one of those indispensable
appendages of the boarding-school miss of every degree,--and asked Elsie
to write her name in it. She had an irresistible feeling, that, sooner
or later, and perhaps very soon, there would attach an unusual interest
to this autograph. Elsie took the pen and wrote, in her sharp Italian
hand,

Elsie Venner, Infelix.

It was a remembrance, doubtless, of the forlorn queen of the "AEneid";
but its coming to her thought in this way confirmed the sensitive
school-girl in her fears for Elsie, and she let fall a tear upon the page
before she closed it.

Of course, the keen and practised observation of Helen Darley could not
fail to notice the change of Elsie's manner and expression. She had long
seen that she was attracted to the young master, and had thought, as the
old Doctor did, that any impression which acted upon her affections might
be the means of awakening a new life in her singularly isolated nature.
Now, however, the concentration of the poor girl's thoughts upon the one
object which had had power to reach her deeper sensibilities was so
painfully revealed in her features, that Helen began to fear once more,
lest Mr. Bernard, in escaping the treacherous violence of an assassin,
had been left to the equally dangerous consequences of a violent,
engrossing passion in the breast of a young creature whose love it would
be ruin to admit and might be deadly to reject. She knew her own heart
too well to fear that any jealousy might mingle with her new
apprehensions. It was understood between Bernard and Helen that they
were too good friends to tamper with the silences and edging proximities
of lovemaking. She knew, too, the simply human, not masculine, interest
which Mr. Bernard took in Elsie; he had been frank with Helen, and more
than satisfied her that with all the pity and sympathy which overflowed
his soul, when he thought of the stricken girl, there mi