two guardian angels. Sometimes I faint almost with the thought
of all that I ought to do, and of my own weakness and wants.--Tell me,
are there not natures born so out of parallel with the lines of natural
law that nothing short of a miracle can bring them right?"

Mr. Bernard had speculated somewhat, as all thoughtful persons of his
profession are forced to do, on the innate organic tendencies with which
individuals, families, and races are born. He replied, therefore, with
a smile, as one to whom the question suggested a very familiar class of
facts.

"Why, of course. Each of us is only the footing-up of a double column of
figures that goes back to the first pair. Every unit tells,--and some of
them are plus, and some minus. If the columns don't add up right, it is
commonly because we can't make out all the figures. I don't mean to say
that something may not be added by Nature to make up for losses and keep
the race to its average, but we are mainly nothing but the answer to
a long sum in addition and subtraction. No doubt there are people born
with impulses at every possible angle to the parallels of Nature, as you
call them. If they happen to cut these at right angles, of course they
are beyond the reach of common influences. Slight obliquities are what
we have most to do with in education. Penitentiaries and insane asylums
take care of most of the right-angle cases.--I am afraid I have put it
too much like a professor, and I am only a student, you know. Pray, what
set you to asking me this? Any strange cases among the scholars?"

The meek teacher's blue eyes met the luminous glance that came with the
question. She, too, was of gentle blood,--not meaning by that that she
was of any noted lineage, but that she came of a cultivated stock, never
rich, but long trained to intellectual callings. A thousand decencies,
amenities, reticences, graces, which no one thinks of until he misses
them, are the traditional right of those who spring from such families.
And when two persons of this exceptional breeding meet in the midst
of the common multitude, they seek each other's company at once by the
natural law of elective affinity. It is wonderful how men and women know
their peers. If two stranger queens, sole survivors of two shipwrecked
vessels, were cast, half-naked, on a rock together, each would at once
address the other as "Our Royal Sister."

Helen Darley looked into the dark eyes of Bernard Langdon glittering
with