. But it
was something she must struggle against, and she had force and pride and
training enough now to maintain her usual tranquillity, in spite of a
certain inward commotion which seemed to reach her breathing and her
pulse by some strange, inexplicable mechanism.

Myrtle, it must be remembered, was no longer the simple country girl who
had run away at fifteen, but a young lady of seventeen, who had learned
all that more than a year's diligence at a great school could teach her,
who had been much with girls of taste and of culture, and was familiar
with the style and manners of those who came from what considered itself
the supreme order in the social hierarchy. Her natural love for
picturesque adornment was qualified by a knowledge of the prevailing
modes not usual in so small a place as Oxbow Village. All this had not
failed to produce its impression on those about her. Persons who, like
Miss Silence Withers, believe, not in education, inasmuch as there is no
healthy nature to be educated, but in transformation, worry about their
charges up to a certain period of their lives. Then, if the
transformation does not come, they seem to think their cares and duties
are at an end, and, considering their theories of human destiny, usually
accept the situation with wonderful complacency. This was the stage
which Miss Silence Withers had reached with reference to Myrtle. It made
her infinitely more agreeable, or less disagreeable, as the reader may
choose one or the other statement, than when she was always fretting
about her "responsibility." She even began to take an interest in some
of Myrtle's worldly experiences, and something like a smile would now
and then disarrange the chief-mourner stillness of her features, as
Myrtle would tell some lively story she had brought away from the gay
society she had frequented.

Cynthia Badlam kept her keen eyes on her like a hawk. Murray Bradshaw
was away, and here was this handsome and agreeable youth coming in to
poach on the preserve of which she considered herself the gamekeeper.
What did it mean? She had heard the story about Susan's being off with
her old love and on with a new one. Ah ha! this is the game, is it?

Clement Lindsay passed not so much a pleasant evening, as one of
strange, perplexed, and mingled delight and inward conflict. He had
found his marble once more turned to flesh and blood, and breathing
before him. This was the woman he was born for; her form was fit