e icy lustre in her eyes had become a soft, calm
light,--that her soul was at peace with all about her and with Him;
above,--this crumb from the children's table was enough for him, as it
was for the Syro-Phoenician woman who asked that the dark spirit might go
out from her daughter.

There was little change the next day, until all at once she said in a
clear voice that she should like to see her master at the school, Mr.
Langdon. He came accordingly, and took the place of Helen at her
bedside. It seemed as if Elsie had forgotten the last scene with him.
Might it be that pride had come in, and she had sent for him only to show
how superior she had grown to the weakness which had betrayed her into
that extraordinary request, so contrary to the instincts and usages of
her sex? Or was it that the singular change which had come over her had
involved her passionate fancy for him and swept it away with her other
habits of thought and feeling? Or could it be that she felt that all
earthly interests were becoming of little account to her, and wished to
place herself right with one to whom she had displayed a wayward movement
of her unbalanced imagination? She welcomed Mr. Bernard as quietly as
she had received Helen Darley. He colored at the recollection of that
last scene, when he came into her presence; but she smiled with perfect
tranquillity. She did not speak to him of any apprehension; but he saw
that she looked upon herself as doomed. So friendly, yet so calm did she
seem through all their interview, that Mr. Bernard could only look back
upon her manifestation of feeling towards him on their walk from the
school as a vagary of a mind laboring under some unnatural excitement,
and wholly at variance with the true character of Elsie Venner as he saw
her before him in her subdued, yet singular beauty. He looked with almost
scientific closeness of observation into the diamond eyes; but that
peculiar light which he knew so well was not there. She was the same in
one sense as on that first day when he had seen her coiling and uncoiling
her golden chain; yet how different in every aspect which revealed her
state of mind and emotion! Something of tenderness there was, perhaps,
in her tone towards him; she would not have sent for him, had she not
felt more than an ordinary interest in him. But through the whole of his
visit she never lost her gracious self-possession. The Dudley race might
well be proud of the last of i