at she had been but a few
months before. She had achieved her independence by her audacious and
most dangerous enterprise. She had gone through strange nervous trials
and spiritual experiences which had matured her more rapidly than years
of common life would have done. She had got back her health, bringing
with it a riper wealth of womanhood. She had found her destiny in the
consciousness that she inherited the beauty belonging to her blood, and
which, after sleeping for a generation or two as if to rest from the
glare of the pageant that follows beauty through its long career of
triumph, had come to the light again in her life, and was to repeat the
legends of the olden time in her own history.

Myrtle's wardrobe had very little of ornament, such as the modistes of
the town would have thought essential to render a young girl like her
presentable. There were a few heirlooms of old date, however, which she
had kept as curiosities until now, and which she looked over until she
found some lace and other convertible material, with which she enlivened
her costume a little for the evening. As she clasped the antique
bracelet around her wrist, she felt as if it were an amulet that
gave her the power of charming which had been so long obsolete in her
lineage. At the bottom of her heart she cherished a secret longing to
try her fascinations on the young lawyer. Who could blame her? It was
not an inwardly expressed intention,--it was the simple instinctive
movement to subjugate the strongest of the other sex who had come in her
way, which, as already said, is as natural to a woman as it is to a man
to be captivated by the loveliest of those to whom he dares to aspire.

Before William Murray Bradshaw and Myrtle Hazard had reached the
Parsonage, the girl's cheeks were flushed and her dark eyes were
flashing with a new excitement. The young man had not made love to her
directly, but he had interested her in herself by a delicate and tender
flattery of manner, and so set her fancies working that she was taken
with him as never before, and wishing that the Parsonage had been a mile
farther from The Poplars. It was impossible for a young girl like Myrtle
to conceal the pleasure she received from listening to her seductive
admirer, who was trying all his trained skill upon his artless
companion. Murray Bradshaw felt sure that the game was in his hands if
he played it with only common prudence. There was no need of hurrying
this child,