fe. If
he suffered this girl to escape him, such an opportunity could hardly,
in the nature of things, present itself a second time. Only one life
between Elsie and her fortune,--and lives are so uncertain! The girl
might not suit him as a wife. Possibly. Time enough to find out after
he had got her. In short, he must have the property, and Elsie Venner,
as she was to go with it,--and then, if he found it convenient and
agreeable to lead a virtuous life, he would settle down and raise
children and vegetables; but if he found it inconvenient and
disagreeable, so much the worse for those that made it so. Like many
other persons, he was not principled against virtue, provided virtue
were a better investment than its opposite; but he knew that there
might be contingencies in which the property would be better without
its incumbrances, and he contemplated this conceivable problem in the
light of all its possible solutions.

One thing Mr. Richard could not conceal from himself: Elsie had some
new cause of indifference, at least, if not of aversion to him. With
the acuteness which persons who make a sole business of their own
interest gain by practice, so that fortune-hunters are often shrewd
where real lovers are terribly simple, he fixed at once on the young
man up at the school where the girl had been going of late, as
probably at the bottom of it.

"Cousin Elsie in love!" so he communed with himself upon his lonely
pillow. "In love with a Yankee schoolmaster! What else can it be? Let
him look out for himself! He'll stand but a bad chance between us.
What makes you think she's in love with him? Met her walking with him.
Don't like her looks and ways;--she's thinking about _something_,
anyhow. Where does she get those books she is reading so often? Not
out of our library, that's certain. If I could have ten minutes' peep
into her chamber now, I would find out where she got them, and what
mischief she was up to."

At that instant, as if some tributary demon had heard his wish, a
shape which could be none but Elsie's flitted through a gleam of
moonlight into the shadow of the the trees. She was setting out on one
of her midnight rambles.

Dick felt his heart stir in its place, and presently his cheeks
flushed with the old longing for an adventure. It was not much to
invade a young girl's deserted chamber, but it would amuse a wakeful
hour, and tell him some little matters he wanted to know. The chamber
he slept in was ov