air--is--close!" gasped Hepsy.

"You are fainting!"

"No; I am--better now."

Hepsy made a desperate effort, and conquered her emotion.

Chester, always delicately thoughtful of the feelings of others, except
when his enthusiasm carried him away, proceeded with his description,
every word of which burned like fire in the poor girl's heart. And
he--fond soul!--deemed that he was pouring the balm of comfort and the
precious ointment of joy upon her spirit! For how could he pause to
consider and know that every charm he ascribed to the professor's
daughter demonstrated to the unhappy creature more and more vividly, and
with terrible force, that she was utterly unlovely and unblest?
Contrasted with the enchanting valley of his love, how arid and desolate
a desert seemed her life!

Meanwhile Miss Josephine Smith had early discovered the absence of
Chester from the circle, and looked about to find him. She could not
rest where he was not. Becoming thirsty again, she made another errand
to the water-pail in the kitchen; but she drank only of the cup of
disappointment. As soon, therefore, as she could do so, without making
her conduct marked, she sought her loadstar in the parlor.

"How dreadfully tholitary you are to-night!" she exclaimed, with a smile
which showed all her teeth. "Do extricate yourself from that frightfully
lonethome corner."

She suddenly discovered that, still beyond the chair in which Chester
was seated, there was another, not unoccupied.

"Ho, ho! what charmer have you there? You are getting to be an awfully
dethperate flirt, Chethter Royden. Oh! nobody but Hepthy!"

"Nobody but my good cousin Hepsy," replied Chester, coldly.

"Dear me! I wouldn't have _thuthpicioned_ you could be tho fathinated
with her!" she cried, in a tone she deemed cuttingly sarcastic.

"Miss Smith," said Chester, quietly, "you need not think, because _you_
happen to have _peculiar_ charms of person, that no others have graces
of a different sort."

"Oh, what an egregiouth flatterer!" returned Josephine Smith, shaking
her meager curls. "Come"--and she boldly seated herself,--"let me know
what your interesting conversation is about."

"We were just speaking of going into the sitting-room," answered the
young man, rising.

He stooped, and whispered to Hepsy.

"Leave me alone a few minutes, then I will come," she murmured.

He pressed her hand, and walked away.

"Don't you thuppose, now," said Miss Smith, following,