nable apparatus of religious intimacy. She had, in
fact, in a quiet way, given Mr. Bradshaw to understand that he would
probably meet Myrtle at the Parsonage if he dropped in at their small
gathering.

Clement walked over to Mrs. Hopkins's after his dinner with the young
lawyer, and asked if Susan was ready to go with him. At the sound of his
voice, Gifted Hopkins smote his forehead, and called himself, in subdued
tones, a miserable being. His imagination wavered uncertain for a while
between pictures of various modes of ridding himself of existence, and
fearful deeds involving the life of others. He had no fell purpose of
actually doing either, but there was a gloomy pleasure in contemplating
them as possibilities, and in mentally sketching the "Lines written in
Despair" which would be found in what was but an hour before the pocket
of the youthful bard, G. H., victim of a hopeless passion. All this
emotion was in the nature of a surprise to the young man. He had fully
believed himself desperately in love with Myrtle Hazard; and it was not
until Clement came into the family circle with the right of eminent
domain over the realm of Susan's affections, that this unfortunate
discovered that Susan's pretty ways and morning dress and love of poetry
and liking for his company had been too much for him, and that he was
henceforth to be wretched during the remainder of his natural life,
except so far as he could unburden himself in song.

Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had asked the privilege of waiting upon
Myrtle to the little party at the Eveleths. Myrtle was not insensible to
the attractions of the young lawyer, though she had never thought of
herself except as a child in her relations with any of these older
persons. But she was not the same girl that 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 i