University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.
THE NEWS REACHES THE DUDLEY MANSION.

Early the next morning Abel Stebbins made
his appearance at Dudley Venner's, and requested
to see the maän o' the haouse abaout somethin'
o' consequence. Mr. Venner sent word that the
messenger should wait below, and presently appeared
in the study, where Abel was making himself
at home, as is the wont of the republican citizen,
when he hides the purple of empire beneath
the apron of domestic service.

“Good mornin', Squire!” said Abel, as Mr.
Venner entered. “My name's Stebbins, 'n' I'm
stoppin' f'r a spell 'ith ol' Doctor Kittredge.”

“Well, Stebbins,” said Mr. Dudley Venner,
“have you brought any special message from
the Doctor?”

“Y' ha'n't heerd nothin' abaout it, Squire, d'
ye mean t' say?” said Abel, — beginning to suspect
that he was the first to bring the news of last
evening's events.

“About what?” asked Mr. Venner, with some
interest.

“Dew tell, naow! Waäl, that beats all! Why,

that 'ere Portagee relation o' yourn 'z been tryin'
t' ketch a fellah 'n a slippernoose, 'n' got ketched
himself, — that's all. Y' ha'n't heerd noth'n'
abaout it?”

“Sit down,” said Mr. Dudley Venner, calmly,
“and tell me all you have to say.”

So Abel sat down and gave him an account of
the events of the last evening. It was a strange
and terrible surprise to Dudley Venner to find
that his nephew, who had been an inmate of his
house and the companion of his daughter, was to
all intents and purposes guilty of the gravest of
crimes. But the first shock was no sooner over
than he began to think what effect the news would
have on Elsie. He imagined that there was a
kind of friendly feeling between them, and he
feared some crisis would be provoked in his
daughter's mental condition by the discovery.
He would wait, however, until she came from
her chamber, before disturbing her with the evil
tidings.

Abel did not forget his message with reference
to the equipments of the dead mustang.

“The' was some things on the hoss, Squire,
that the man he ketched said he didn' care no
gre't abaout; but perhaps you'd like to have 'em
fetched to the mansion-haouse. Ef y' didn' care
abaout 'em, though, I shouldn' min' keepin' on
'em; they might come handy some time or
'nother: they say, holt on t' anything for ten year
'n' there'll be some kin' o' use for 't.”

“Keep everything,” said Dudley Venner. “I
don't want to see anything belonging to that
young man.”

So Abel nodded to Mr. Venner, and left the
study to find some of the men about the stable
to tell and talk over with them the events of
the last evening. He presently came upon Elbridge,
chief of the equine department, and driver
of the family-coach.

“Good mornin', Abe,” said Elbridge. “What's
fetched y' daown here so all-fired airly?”

“You're a darned pooty lot daown here, you
be!” Abel answered. “Better keep your Portagees
t' home nex' time, ketchin' folks 'ith slippernooses
raoun' their necks, 'n' kerryin' knives 'n
their boots!”

“What 'r' you jawin' abaout?” Elbridge said,
looking up to see if he was in earnest, and what
he meant.

“Jawin' abaout? You'll find aout 'z soon 'z
y' go into that 'ere stable o' yourn! Y' won't
curry that 'ere long-tailed black hoss no more; 'n'
y' won't set y'r eyes on the fellah that rid him,
ag'in, in a hurry!”

Elbridge walked straight to the stable, without
saying a word, found the door unlocked, and
went in.

“Th' critter's gone, sure enough!” he said.
“Glad on 't! The darndest, kickin'est, bitin'est
beast th't ever I see, 'r ever wan' t' see ag'in!
Good reddance! Don' wan' no snappin'-turkles

in my stable! Whar's the man gone th't brought
the critter?”

“Whar he 's gone? Guess y' better go 'n'
aäsk my ol' man; he kerried him off laäs' night;
'n' when he comes back, mebbe he'll tell ye whar
he's gone tew!”

By this time Elbridge had found out that Abel
was in earnest, and had something to tell. He
looked at the litter in the mustang's stall, then at
the crib.

“Ha'n't ēat b't haälf his feed. Ha'n't been
daown on his straw. Must ha' been took aout
somewhere abaout ten 'r 'leven o'clock. I know
that 'ere critter's ways. The fellah's had him
aout nights afore; b't I never thought nothin' o'
no mischief. He's a kin' o' haälf Injin. What
is 't the chap 's been a-doin' on? Tell 's all
abaout it.”

Abel sat down on a meal-chest, picked up a
straw and put it into his mouth. Elbridge sat
down at the other end, pulled out his jack-knife,
opened the penknife-blade, and began sticking it
into the lid of the meal-chest. The Doctor's man
had a story to tell, and he meant to get all the
enjoyment out of it. So he told it with every
luxury of circumstance. Mr. Venner's man heard
it all with open mouth. No listener in the gardens
of Stamboul could have found more rapture
in a tale heard amidst the perfume of roses and
the voices of birds and tinkling of fountains than
Elbridge in following Abel's narrative, as they

sat there in the aromatic ammoniacal atmosphere
of the stable, the grinding of the horses' jaws
keeping evenly on through it all, with now and
then the interruption of a stamping hoof, and at
intervals a ringing crow from the barn-yard.

Elbridge stopped a minute to think, after Abel
had finished.

“Who's took care o' them things that was on
the hoss?” he said, gravely.

“Waäl, Langden, he seemed to kin' o' think
I'd ought to have 'em, — 'n' the Squire, he didn'
seem to have no 'bjection; 'n' so, — waäl, I calc'late
I sh'll jes' holt on to 'em myself; they a'n't
good f'r much, but they're cur'ous t' keep t' look
at.”

Mr. Venner's man did not appear much gratified
by this arrangement, especially as he had a
shrewd suspicion that some of the ornaments of
the bridle were of precious metal, having made
occasional examinations of them with the edge
of a file. But he did not see exactly what to do
about it, except to get them from Abel in the
way of bargain.

“Waäl, no, — they a'n't good for much 'xcep'
to look at. 'F y' ever rid on that seddle once,
y' wouldn' try it ag'in, very spry, — not 'f y' c'd
haälp y'rsaälf. I tried it, — darned 'f I sot daown
f'r th' nex' week, — ēat all my victuals stan'in'.
I sh'd like t' hev them things wal enough to heng
up 'n the stable; 'f y' want t' trade some day,
fetch 'em along daown.”

Abel rather expected that Elbridge would have
laid claim to the saddle and bridle on the strength
of some promise or other presumptive title, and
thought himself lucky to get off with only offering
to think abaout tradin'.

When Elbridge returned to the house, he found
the family in a state of great excitement. Mr.
Venner had told Old Sophy, and she had informed
the other servants. Everybody knew
what had happened, excepting Elsie. Her father
had charged them all to say nothing about it to
her; he would tell her, when she came down.

He heard her step at last, — a light, gliding
step, — so light that her coming was often unheard,
except by those who perceived the faint
rustle that went with it. She was paler than
common this morning, as she came into her father's
study.

After a few words of salutation, he said quietly,
—

“Elsie, my dear, your cousin Richard has left
us.”

She grew still paler, as she asked, —

“Is he dead?”

Dudley Venner started to see the expression
with which Elsie put this question.

“He is living, — but dead to us from this day
forward,” said her father.

He proceeded to tell her, in a general way, the
story he had just heard from Abel. There could
be no doubting it; — he remembered him as the

Doctor's man; and as Abel had seen all with his
own eyes, — as Dick's chamber, when unlocked
with a spare key, was found empty, and his bed
had not been slept in, he accepted the whole account
as true.

When he told of Dick's attempt on the young
school-master, (“You know Mr. Langdon very
well, Elsie, — a perfectly inoffensive young man,
as I understand,”) Elsie turned her face away
and slid along by the wall to the window which
looked out on the little grass-plot with the white
stone standing in it. Her father could not see
her face, but he knew by her movements that her
dangerous mood was on her. When she heard
the sequel of the story, the discomfiture and capture
of Dick, she turned round for an instant,
with a look of contempt and of something like
triumph upon her face. Her father saw that her
cousin had become odious to her. He knew well,
by every change of her countenance, by her movements,
by every varying curve of her graceful figure,
the transitions from passion to repose, from
fierce excitement to the dull languor which often
succeeded her threatening paroxysms.

She remained looking out at the window. A
group of white fan-tailed pigeons had lighted on
the green plot before it and clustered about one
of their companions who lay on his back, fluttering
in a strange way, with outspread wings and
twitching feet. Elsie uttered a faint cry; these
were her special favorites, and often fed from her

hand. She threw open the long window, sprang
out, caught up the white fan-tail, and held it to
her bosom. The bird stretched himself out, and
then lay still, with open eyes, lifeless. She looked
at him a moment, and, sliding in through the
open window and through the study, sought her
own apartment, where she locked herself in, and
began to sob and moan like those that weep.
But the gracious solace of tears seemed to be
denied her, and her grief, like her anger, was a
dull ache, longing, like that, to finish itself with
a fierce paroxysm, but wanting its natural outlet.

This seemingly trifling incident of the death
of her favorite appeared to change all the current
of her thought. Whether it were the sight of the
dying bird, or the thought that her own agency
might have been concerned in it, or some deeper
grief, which took this occasion to declare itself,
— some dark remorse or hopeless longing, —
whatever it might be, there was an unwonted
tumult in her soul. To whom should she go in
her vague misery? Only to Him who knows all
His creatures' sorrows, and listens to the faintest
human cry. She knelt, as she had been taught
to kneel from her childhood, and tried to pray.
But her thoughts refused to flow in the language
of supplication. She could not plead for herself
as other women plead in their hours of anguish.
She rose like one who should stoop to drink, and
find dust in the place of water. Partly from restlessness,
partly from an attraction she hardly

avowed to herself, she followed her usual habit
and strolled listlessly along to the school.

Of course everybody at the Institute was full
of the terrible adventure of the preceding evening.
Mr. Bernard felt poorly enough; but he
had made it a point to show himself the next
morning, as if nothing had happened. Helen
Darley knew nothing of it all until she had risen,
when the gossipy matron of the establishment
made her acquainted with all its details, embellished
with such additional ornamental appendages
as it had caught up in transmission from lip
to lip. She did not love to betray her sensibilities,
but she was pale and tremulous and very
nearly tearful when Mr. Bernard entered the sitting-room,
showing on his features traces of the
violent shock he had received and the heavy
slumber from which he had risen with throbbing
brows. What the poor girl's impulse was, on
seeing him, we need not inquire too curiously.
If he had been her own brother, she would have
kissed him and cried on his neck; but something
held her back. There is no galvanism in kiss-your-brother;
it is copper against copper: but
alien bloods develop strange currents, when they
flow close to each other, with only the films that
cover lip and cheek between them. Mr. Bernard,
as some of us may remember, violated the proprieties
and laid himself open to reproach by his enterprise
with a bouncing village-girl, to whose

rosy cheek an honest smack was not probably an
absolute novelty. He made it all up by his discretion
and good behavior now. He saw by
Helen's moist eye and trembling lip that her
woman's heart was off its guard, and he knew,
by the infallible instinct of sex, that he should be
forgiven, if he thanked her for her sisterly sympathies
in the most natural way, — expressive, and
at the same time economical of breath and utterance.
He would not give a false look to their
friendship by any such demonstration. Helen
was a little older than himself, but the aureole
of young womanhood had not yet begun to fade
from around her. She was surrounded by that
enchanted atmosphere into which the girl walks
with dreamy eyes, and out of which the woman
passes with a story written on her forehead.
Some people think very little of these refinements;
they have not studied magnetism and the
law of the square of the distance.

So Mr. Bernard thanked Helen for her interest
without the aid of the twenty-seventh letter of the
alphabet, — the love labial, — the limping consonant
which it takes two to speak plain. Indeed,
he scarcely let her say a word, at first; for he
saw that it was hard for her to conceal her emotion.
No wonder; he had come within a hair's-breadth
of losing his life, and he had been a very
kind friend and a very dear companion to her.

There were some curious spiritual experiences
connected with his last evening's adventure,

which were working very strongly in his mind.
It was borne in upon him irresistibly that he
had been dead since he had seen Helen, — as
dead as the son of the Widow of Nain before
the bier was touched and he sat up and began
to speak. There was an interval between two
conscious moments which appeared to him like
a temporary annihilation, and the thoughts it
suggested were worrying him with strange perplexities.

He remembered seeing the dark figure on
horseback rise in the saddle and something
leap from its hand. He remembered the thrill
he felt as the coil settled on his shoulders, and
the sudden impulse which led him to fire as he
did. With the report of the pistol all became
blank, until he found himself in a strange, bewildered
state, groping about for the weapon,
which he had a vague consciousness of having
dropped. But, according to Abel's account, there
must have been an interval of some minutes between
these recollections, and he could not help
asking, Where was the mind, the soul, the thinking
principle, all this time?

A man is stunned by a blow with a stick on
the head. He becomes unconscious. Another
man gets a harder blow on the head from a
bigger stick, and it kills him. Does he become
unconscious, too? If so, when does he come to
his consciousness? The man who has had a
slight or moderate blow comes to himself when

the immediate shock passes off and the organs
begin to work again, or when a bit of the skull
is pried up, if that happens to be broken. Suppose
the blow is hard enough to spoil the brain
and stop the play of the organs, what happens
then?

A British captain was struck by a cannon-ball
on the head, just as he was giving an order, at
the Battle of the Nile. Fifteen months afterwards
he was trephined at Greenwich Hospital,
having been insensible all that time. Immediately
after the operation his consciousness returned,
and he at once began carrying out the
order he was giving when the shot struck him.
Suppose he had never been trephined, when
would his consciousness have returned? When
his breath ceased and his heart stopped beating?

When Mr. Bernard said to Helen, “I have
been dead since I saw you,” it startled her not
a little; for his expression was that of perfect
good faith, and she feared that his mind was
disordered. When he explained, not as has been
done just now, at length, but in a hurried, imperfect
way, the meaning of his strange assertion,
and the fearful Sadduceeisms which it had suggested
to his mind, she looked troubled at first,
and then thoughtful. She did not feel able to
answer all the difficulties he raised, but she met
them with that faith which is the strength as well
as the weakness of women, — which makes them

weak in the hands of man, but strong in the presence
of the Unseen.

“It is a strange experience,” she said; “but I
once had something like it. I fainted, and lost
some five or ten minutes out of my life, as much
as if I had been dead. But when I came to myself,
I was the same person every way, in my
recollections and character. So I suppose that
loss of consciousness is not death. And if I
was born out of unconsciousness into infancy
with many family-traits of mind and body, I
can believe, from my own reason, even without
help from Revelation, that I shall be born again
out of the unconsciousness of death with my
individual traits of mind and body. If death
is, as it should seem to be, a loss of consciousness,
that does not shake my faith; for I have
been put into a body once already to fit me for
living here, and I hope to be in some way fitted
after this life to enjoy a better one. But it is all
trust in God and in his Word. These are enough
for me; I hope they are for you.”

Helen was a minister's daughter, and familiar
from her childhood with this class of questions,
especially with all the doubts and perplexities
which are sure to assail every thinking child
bred in any inorganic or not thoroughly vitalized
faith, — as is too often the case with the
children of professional theologians. The kind of
discipline they are subjected to is like that of the
Flat-Head Indian pappooses. At five or ten or

fifteen years old they put their hands up to their
foreheads and ask, What are they strapping
down my brains in this way for? So they tear
off the sacred bandages of the great Flat-Head
tribe, and there follows a mighty rush of blood
to the long-compressed region. This accounts,
in the most lucid manner, for those sudden freaks
with which certain children of this class astonish
their worthy parents at the period of life when
they are growing fast, and, the frontal pressure
beginning to be felt as something intolerable,
they tear off the holy compresses.

The hour for school came, and they went to
the great hall for study. It would not have occurred
to Mr. Silas Peckham to ask his assistant
whether he felt well enough to attend to his
duties; and Mr. Bernard chose to be at his
post. A little headache and confusion were all
that remained of his symptoms.

Later, in the course of the forenoon, Elsie
Venner came and took her place. The girls all
stared at her, — naturally enough; for it was
hardly to have been expected that she would
show herself, after such an event in the household
to which she belonged. Her expression
was somewhat peculiar, and, of course, was
attributed to the shock her feelings had undergone
on hearing of the crime attempted by her
cousin and daily companion. When she was
looking on her book, or on any indifferent object,
her countenance betrayed some inward disturbance,

which knitted her dark brows, and
seemed to throw a deeper shadow over her
features. But, from time to time, she would
lift her eyes toward Mr. Bernard, and let them
rest upon him, without a thought, seemingly,
that she herself was the subject of observation
or remark. Then they seemed to lose their cold
glitter, and soften into a strange, dreamy tenderness.
The deep instincts of womanhood were
striving to grope their way to the surface of her
being through all the alien influences which
overlaid them. She could be secret and cunning
in working out any of her dangerous impulses,
but she did not know how to mask the
unwonted feeling which fixed her eyes and her
thoughts upon the only person who had ever
reached the spring of her hidden sympathies.

The girls all looked at Elsie, whenever they
could steal a glance unperceived, and many of
them were struck with this singular expression
her features wore. They had long whispered it
around among each other that she had a liking
for the master; but there were too many of them
of whom something like this could be said, to
make it very remarkable. Now, however, when
so many little hearts were fluttering at the thought
of the peril through which the handsome young
master had so recently passed, they were more
alive than ever to the supposed relation between
him and the dark school-girl. Some had supposed
there was a mutual attachment between

them; there was a story that they were secretly
betrothed, in accordance with the rumor which
had been current in the village. At any rate,
some conflict was going on in that still, remote,
clouded soul, and all the girls who looked upon her
face were impressed and awed as they had never
been before by the shadows that passed over it.

One of these girls was more strongly arrested
by Elsie's look than the others. This was a delicate,
pallid creature, with a high forehead, and
wide-open pupils, which looked as if they could
take in all the shapes that flit in what, to common
eyes, is darkness, — a girl said to be clairvoyant
under certain influences. In the recess, as
it was called, or interval of suspended studies in
the middle of the forenoon, this girl carried her
autograph-book, — for she had one of those indispensable
appendages of the boarding-school miss
of every degree, — and asked Elsie to write her
name in it. She had an irresistible feeling, that,
sooner or later, and perhaps very soon, there
would attach an unusual interest to this autograph.
Elsie took the pen and wrote, in her sharp
Italian hand,

Elsie Venner, Infelix.

It was a remembrance, doubtless, of the forlorn
queen of the “Æneid”; but its coming to her
thought in this way confirmed the sensitive
school-girl in her fears for Elsie, and she let fall
a tear upon the page before she closed it.

Of course, the keen and practised observation
of Helen Darley could not fail to notice the change
of Elsie's manner and expression. She had long
seen that she was attracted to the young master,
and had thought, as the old Doctor did, that any
impression which acted upon her affections might
be the means of awakening a new life in her singularly
isolated nature. Now, however, the concentration
of the poor girl's thoughts upon the
one object which had had power to reach her
deeper sensibilities was so painfully revealed in
her features, that Helen began to fear once more,
lest Mr. Bernard, in escaping the treacherous violence
of an assassin, had been left to the equally
dangerous consequences of a violent, engrossing
passion in the breast of a young creature whose
love it would be ruin to admit and might be deadly
to reject. She knew her own heart too well to
fear that any jealousy might mingle with her new
apprehensions. It was understood between Bernard
and Helen that they were too good friends
to tamper with the silences and edging proximities
of love-making. She knew, too, the simply
human, not masculine, interest which Mr. Bernard
took in Elsie; he had been frank with Helen,
and more than satisfied her that with all the pity
and sympathy which overflowed his soul, when
he thought of the stricken girl, there mingled not
one drop of such love as a youth may feel for a
maiden.

It may help the reader to gain some understanding

of the anomalous nature of Elsie Venner,
if we look with Helen into Mr. Bernard's
opinions and feelings with reference to her, as
they had shaped themselves in his consciousness
at the period of which we are speaking.

At first he had been impressed by her wild
beauty, and the contrast of all her looks and ways
with those of the girls around her. Presently a
sense of some ill-defined personal element, which
half attracted and half repelled those who looked
upon her, and especially those on whom she
looked, began to make itself obvious to him, as
he soon found it was painfully sensible to his
more susceptible companion, the lady-teacher.
It was not merely in the cold light of her diamond
eyes, but in all her movements, in her
graceful postures as she sat, in her costume, and,
he sometimes thought, even in her speech, that
this obscure and exceptional character betrayed
itself. When Helen had said, that, if they were
living in times when human beings were subject
to possession, she should have thought there was
something not human about Elsie, it struck an
unsuspected vein of thought in his own mind,
which he hated to put in words, but which was
continually trying to articulate itself among the
dumb thoughts which lie under the perpetual
stream of mental whispers.

Mr. Bernard's professional training had made
him slow to accept marvellous stories and many
forms of superstition. Yet, as a man of science,

he well knew that just on the verge of the demonstrable
facts of physics and physiology there is a
nebulous border-land which what is called “common
sense” perhaps does wisely not to enter, but
which uncommon sense, or the fine apprehension
of privileged intelligences, may cautiously explore,
and in so doing find itself behind the scenes
which make up for the gazing world the show
which is called Nature.

It was with something of this finer perception,
perhaps with some degree of imaginative exaltation,
that he set himself to solving the problem
of Elsie's influence to attract and repel those
around her. His letter already submitted to the
reader hints in what direction his thoughts were
disposed to turn. Here was a magnificent organization,
superb in vigorous womanhood, with a
beauty such as never comes but after generations
of culture; yet through all this rich nature there
ran some alien current of influence, sinuous and
dark, as when a clouded streak seams the white
marble of a perfect statue.

It would be needless to repeat the particular
suggestions which had come into his mind, as
they must probably have come into that of the
reader who has noted the singularities of Elsie's
tastes and personal traits. The images which
certain poets had dreamed of seemed to have
become a reality before his own eyes. Then
came that unexplained adventure of The Mountain,
— almost like a dream in recollection, yet

assuredly real in some of its main incidents, —
with all that it revealed or hinted. This girl did
not fear to visit the dreaded region, where danger
lurked in every nook and beneath every tuft of
leaves. Did the tenants of the fatal ledge recognize
some mysterious affinity which made them
tributary to the cold glitter of her diamond eyes?
Was she from her birth one of those frightful
children, such as he had read about, and the
Professor had told him of, who form unnatural
friendships with cold, writhing ophidians? There
was no need of so unwelcome a thought as this;
she had drawn him away from the dark opening
in the rock at the moment when he seemed to be
threatened by one of its malignant denizens; that
was all he could be sure of; the counter-fascination
might have been a dream, a fancy, a coincidence.
All wonderful things soon grow doubtful
in our own minds, as do even common events, if
great interests prove suddenly to attach to their
truth or falsehood.

— I, who am telling of these occurrences,
saw a friend in the great city, on the morning of
a most memorable disaster, hours after the time
when the train which carried its victims to their
doom had left. I talked with him, and was for
some minutes, at least, in his company. When
I reached home, I found that the story had gone
before that he was among the lost, and I alone
could contradict it to his weeping friends and relatives.
I did contradict it; but, alas! I began

soon to doubt myself, penetrated by the contagion
of their solicitude; my recollection began to question
itself; the order of events became dislocated;
and when I heard that he had reached home in
safety, the relief was almost as great to me as to
those who had expected to see their own brother's
face no more.

Mr. Bernard was disposed, then, not to accept
the thought of any odious personal relationship
of the kind which had suggested itself to him
when he wrote the letter referred to. That the
girl had something of the feral nature, her wild,
lawless rambles in forbidden and blasted regions
of The Mountain at all hours, her familiarity with
the lonely haunts where any other human foot
was so rarely seen, proved clearly enough. But
the more he thought of all her strange instincts
and modes of being, the more he became convinced
that whatever alien impulse swayed her
will and modulated or diverted or displaced her
affections came from some impression that reached
far back into the past, before the days when the
faithful Old Sophy had rocked her in the cradle.
He believed that she had brought her ruling
tendency, whatever it was, into the world with
her.

When the school was over and the girls had all
gone, Helen lingered in the school-room to speak
with Mr. Bernard.

“Did you remark Elsie's ways this forenoon?”
she said.

“No, not particularly; I have not noticed anything
as sharply as I commonly do; my head has
been a little queer, and I have been thinking over
what we were talking about, and how near I
came to solving the great problem which every
day makes clear to such multitudes of people.
What about Elsie?”

“Bernard, her liking for you is growing into a
passion. I have studied girls for a long while,
and I know the difference between their passing
fancies and their real emotions. I told you, you
remember, that Rosa would have to leave us; we
barely missed a scene, I think, if not a whole
tragedy, by her going at the right moment. But
Elsie is infinitely more dangerous to herself and
others. Women's love is fierce enough, if it once
gets the mastery of them, always; but this poor
girl does not know what to do with a passion.”

Mr. Bernard had never told Helen the story of
the flower in his Virgil, or that other adventure
which he would have felt awkwardly to refer to;
but it had been perfectly understood between
them that Elsie showed in her own singular
way a well-marked partiality for the young
master.

“Why don't they take her away from the
school, if she is in such a strange, excitable
state?” said Mr. Bernard.

“I believe they are afraid of her,” Helen answered.
“It is just one of those cases that are
ten thousand thousand times worse than insanity.

I don't think, from what I hear, that her father
has ever given up hoping that she will outgrow
her peculiarities. Oh, these peculiar children for
whom parents go on hoping every morning and
despairing every night! If I could tell you half
that mothers have told me, you would feel that
the worst of all diseases of the moral sense and
the will are those which all the Bedlams turn
away from their doors as not being cases of
insanity!”

“Do you think her father has treated her judiciously?”
said Mr. Bernard.

“I think,” said Helen, with a little hesitation,
which Mr. Bernard did not happen to notice, —
“I think he has been very kind and indulgent,
and I do not know that he could have treated her
otherwise with a better chance of success.”

“He must of course be fond of her,” Mr. Bernard
said; “there is nothing else in the world for
him to love.”

Helen dropped a book she held in her hand,
and, stooping to pick it up, the blood rushed into
her cheeks.

“It is getting late,” she said; “you must not
stay any longer in this close school-room. Pray,
go and get a little fresh air before dinner-time.”