and went out on the lawn for an hour's recreation
before lunch.

There he often met his young friends, and always saw Claudia. It was
Miss Merlin's good pleasure to approve and encourage this poor but
gifted youth; and she took great credit, to herself for her
condescension. She seemed to herself like some high and mighty princess
graciously patronizing some deserving young peasant. She often called
him to her side; interested himself in his studies and in his health,
praised his assiduity, but warned him not to confine himself too closely
to his books, as ambitious students had been known before now to
sacrifice their lives to the pursuit of an unattainable fame. She told
him that she meant to interest her father in his fortunes; and that she
hoped in another year the judge would be able to procure for him the
situation of usher in some school, or tutor in some family. Although she
was younger than Ishmael, yet her tone and manner in addressing him was
that of an elder as well as of a superior; and blended the high
authority of a young queen with the deep tenderness of a little mother.
For instance, when he would come out at noon, she would often beckon him
to her side, as she sat in her garden chair, under the shadow of the
great elm tree, with a book of poetry or a piece of needlework in her
hands. And when he came, she would make him sit down on the grass at her
feet, and she would put her small, white hand on his burning forehead,
and look in his face with her beautiful, dark eyes, and murmur softly:

"Poor boy; your head aches; I know it does. You have been sitting under
the blazing sun in that south window of the schoolroom, so absorbed in
your studies that you forgot to close your shutters."

And she would take a vial of eau-de-cologne from her pocket, pour a
portion of it upon a handkerchief, and with her own fair hand bathe his
heated brows; at the same time administering a queenly reprimand, or a
motherly caution, as pride or tenderness happened to predominate in her
capricious mood.

This royal or maternal manner in this beautiful girl would not have
attracted the hearts of most men; but Ishmael, at the age of seventeen,
was yet too young to feel that haughty pride of full-grown manhood which
recoils from the patronage of women, and most of all from that of the
woman they love.

To him, this proud and tender interest for his welfare added a greater
and more perilous fascination to the charms of his bea