study the arts of pleasing,--a man of sense,
when he finds he has established his second parallel too soon,
retires quietly to his first, and begins working on his covered ways
again. [The whole art of love may be read in any Encyclopaedia under
the title _Fortification_, where the terms just used are explained.]
After the little adventure of the necklace, Dick retreated at once to
his first parallel. Elsie loved riding,--and would go off with him on
a gallop now and then. He was a master of all those strange Indian
horseback-feats which shame the tricks of the circus-riders, and used
to astonish and almost amuse her sometimes by disappearing from his
saddle, like a phantom horseman, lying flat against the side of the
bounding creature that bore him, as if he were a hunting leopard with
his claws in the horse's flank and flattening himself out against his
heaving ribs. Elsie knew a little Spanish too, which she had learned
from the young person who had taught her dancing, and Dick enlarged
her vocabulary with a few soft phrases, and would sing her a song
sometimes, touching the air upon an ancient-looking guitar they had
found with the ghostly things in the garret,--a quaint old
instrument, marked E.M. on the back, and supposed to have belonged to
a certain Elizabeth Mascarene, before mentioned in connection with a
work of art,--a fair, dowerless lady, who smiled and sung and faded
away, unwedded, a hundred years ago, as dowerless ladies, not a few,
are smiling and singing and fading now,--God grant each of them His
love,--and one human heart as its interpreter!

As for school, Elsie went or stayed away as she liked. Sometimes,
when they thought she was at her desk in the great school-room, she
would be on The Mountain,--alone always. Dick wanted to go with her,
but she would never let him. Once, when she had followed the zigzag
path a little way up, she looked back and caught a glimpse of him
following her. She turned and passed him without a word, but giving
him a look which seemed to make the scars on his wrist tingle, went
to her room, where she locked herself up, and did not come out again
till evening,--old Sophy having brought her food, and set it down,
not speaking, but looking into her eyes inquiringly, like a dumb
beast trying to feel out his master's will in his face. The evening
was clear and the moon shining. As Dick sat at his chamber-window,
looking at the mountain-side, he saw a gray-dressed figure flit