ood and youth. I believe it is so dying out; but I am
afraid,--yes, I must say it, I fear it has involved the centres of
life in its own decay. There is hardly any pulse at Elsie's wrist;
no stimulants seem to rouse her; and it looks as if life were slowly
retreating inwards, so that by-and-by she will sleep as those who lie
down in the cold and never wake."

Strange as it may seem, her father heard all this not without deep
sorrow, and such marks of it as his thoughtful and tranquil nature,
long schooled by suffering, claimed or permitted, but with a resignation
itself the measure of his past trials. Dear as his daughter might become
to him, all he dared to ask of Heaven was that she might be restored to
that truer self which lay beneath her false and adventitious being. If
he could once see that the 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