different; he is
intensely plain, but I believe he is very learned. You don't think him
plain? Oh, you don't know? Well, I suppose you don't care, you must see
so many. But I must say, when a young man looks like that, I call him
painfully plain. I heard Doctor Tarrant make the remark the last time he
was here. I don't say but what the plainest are the best. Well, I had no
idea we were going to have a party when I asked you. I wonder whether
Verena hadn't better hand the cake; we generally find the students enjoy
it so much."

This office was ultimately delegated to Selah, who, after a considerable
absence, reappeared with a dish of dainties, which he presented
successively to each member of the company. Olive saw Verena lavish her
smiles on Mr. Gracie and Mr. Burrage; the liveliest relation had
established itself, and the latter gentleman in especial abounded in
appreciative laughter. It might have been fancied, just from looking at
the group, that Verena's vocation was to smile and talk with young men
who bent towards her; might have been fancied, that is, by a person less
sure of the contrary than Olive, who had reason to know that a "gifted
being" is sent into the world for a very different purpose, and that
making the time pass pleasantly for conceited young men is the last duty
you are bound to think of if you happen to have a talent for embodying a
cause. Olive tried to be glad that her friend had the richness of nature
that makes a woman gracious without latent purposes; she reflected that
Verena was not in the smallest degree a flirt, that she was only
enchantingly and universally genial, that nature had given her a
beautiful smile, which fell impartially on every one, man and woman,
alike. Olive may have been right, but it shall be confided to the reader
that in reality she never knew, by any sense of her own, whether Verena
were a flirt or not. This young lady could not possibly have told her
(even if she herself knew, which she didn't), and Olive, destitute of
the quality, had no means of taking the measure in another of the subtle
feminine desire to please. She could see the difference between Mr.
Gracie and Mr. Burrage; her being bored by Mrs. Tarrant's attempting to
point it out is perhaps a proof of that. It was a curious incident of
her zeal for the regeneration of her sex that manly things were, perhaps
on the whole, what she understood best. Mr. Burrage was rather a
handsome youth, with a laughing, cl