The spectacles, however, continued to do their work nobly for the
professor, not only assisting him to make his scientific observations
on the habits of a potato-bug in captivity, but showing him with far
more clearness that Kate Brewster and Lennox Sanderson contrived to
spend a great deal of time in each other's society, and that both
seemed to enjoy the time thus spent.

The professor went back to his beetles, but they palled. The most
gorgeous butterfly ever constructed had not one-tenth the charm for him
that was contained in a glance of Kate Brewster's eyes, or a glimpse of
her golden head as she flitted about the house. And so the autumn
waned.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

"Teach me to feel another's woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me."--_Pope_.

Sanderson, during his visits to the Bartlett farm--and they became more
frequent as time went on--would look at Anna with cold curiosity, not
unmixed with contempt, when by chance they happened to be alone for a
moment. But the girl never displayed by so much as the quiver of an
eye-lash that she had ever seen him before.

Had Lennox Sanderson been capable of fathoming Anna Moore, or even of
reading her present marble look or tone, he would have seen that he had
little to apprehend from her beyond contempt, a thing he would not in
the least have minded; but he was cunning, and like the cunning
shallow. So he began to formulate plans for making things even with
Anna--in other words, buying her off.

His admiration for Kate deepened in proportion as the square of that
young woman's reserve increased. She was not only the first woman who
refused to burn incense at his shrine, but also the first who frankly
admitted that she found him amusing. She mildly guyed his accent, his
manner of talking, his London clothes, his way of looking at things.
Never having lived near a university town, she escaped the traditional
hero worship. It was a new sensation for Sanderson, and eventually he
succumbed to it.

"You know, Miss Kate," he said one day, "you are positively the most
refreshing girl I have ever met. You don't know how much I love you."

Kate considered for a moment. There was a hint of patronage, it seemed
to her, in his compliment, that she did not care for.

"Oh, consider the debt cancelled, Mr. Sanderson. You have not found my
rustic simplicity any more refreshing than I have