ered little to him whether they feared
or respected him, or were hypocritically obsequious, after the fashion
of the weaker. His studies, at all events, profited by this lack of
distraction. Already his two years of desultory and omnivorous reading
had given him a facile familiarity with many things, which left
him utterly free of the timidity, awkwardness, or non-interest of a
beginner. His usually reserved manner, which had been lack of expression
rather than of conviction, had deceived his tutors. The audacity of a
mind that had never been dominated by others, and owed no allegiance to
precedent, made his merely superficial progress something marvelous.

At the end of the first year he was a phenomenal scholar, who seemed
capable of anything. Nevertheless, Father Sobriente had an interview
with Don Juan, and as a result Clarence was slightly kept back in his
studies, a little more freedom from the rules was conceded to him, and
he was even encouraged to take some diversion. Of such was the
privilege to visit the neighboring town of Santa Clara unrestricted and
unattended. He had always been liberally furnished with pocket-money,
for which, in his companionless state and Spartan habits, he had a
singular and unboyish contempt. Nevertheless, he always appeared dressed
with scrupulous neatness, and was rather distinguished-looking in his
older reserve and melancholy self-reliance.

Lounging one afternoon along the Alameda, a leafy avenue set out by the
early Mission Fathers between the village of San Jose and the convent
of Santa Clara, he saw a double file of young girls from the convent
approaching, on their usual promenade. A view of this procession
being the fondest ambition of the San Jose collegian, and especially
interdicted and circumvented by the good Fathers attending the college
excursions, Clarence felt for it the profound indifference of a boy who,
in the intermediate temperate zone of fifteen years, thinks that he
is no longer young and romantic! He was passing them with a careless
glance, when a pair of deep violet eyes caught his own under the broad
shade of a coquettishly beribboned hat, even as it had once looked at
him from the depths of a calico sunbonnet. Susy! He started, and would
have spoken; but with a quick little gesture of caution and a meaning
glance at the two nuns who walked at the head and foot of the file,
she indicated him to follow. He did so at a respectful distance, albeit
wondering