ing gaze, my mutinous thoughts. Strange that
this particular evening, while I sat with the half forgotten letter in my
pocket, imagination was busier than ever, while I found it more than
usually difficult to comprehend Lessing's ponderous thoughts; and the
desire seized me to leave these high thinkers, on their lonely mountain
heights, and, with my guardian, come down to the summer places of
everyday life.

He noticed my abstraction at last, for he said abruptly:

"Are you not interested in to-day's lesson, Medoline?"

I faltered as I met his searching eye.

"I am always interested in what you say, Mr. Winthrop; but to-day my
thoughts have been wandering a good deal."

"Where have they been wandering to?"

My face crimsoned, but I kept silent.

"I would like to know what you were thinking about?" he said, gently.

"A young girl's foolish fancies would seem very childish to you, after
what you have been talking about."

"Nevertheless, we like sometimes the childish and innocent. I have a
fancy for it just now, Medoline."

"Please, Mr. Winthrop, I cannot tell you all my thoughts. They are surely
my own, and cannot be torn from me ruthlessly."

"What sort of persons are you meeting now at your Mill Road Mission?"

He suddenly changed the conversation, to my intense relief.

"The very same that I have met all along, with the exception of the Sykes
family--they are a new experience."

"Were you thinking of any one you know there just now, that caused your
inattention?"

"Why, certainly not, Mr. Winthrop. I do not care so very much for them as
that."

He was silent for a good while, in one of his abstracted moods; and,
thinking the lesson was over for that day, I was about to leave the room.
He arose, and, going to the window, stood looking out into the night--I
quietly watching him, and wondering of what he was so busily thinking.
Presently he turned, and, coming to the table where I was sitting, stood
looking down intently at me.

"Medoline, has it ever occurred to you that you are an unusually
attractive bit of womanhood?"

I drew back almost as if he had struck me a blow. He smiled.

"You are as odd as you are fascinating," he said.

He went to his writing-desk. I watched him unlock one of the drawers and
take out two envelopes. He came back and stood opposite me at the table.

"I received, a few days ago, a letter from my friend Bovyer, in which he
enclosed one for you, which I was at liberty t