ng and frowning, in movement or at rest, she was
always a mystery; the depths of her being remaining still in hiding,
however calmly she spoke or however graciously she turned upon you the
light of her deep gray eyes.

Mr. Orcutt loved her. From the first vision he had of her face and form
dominating according to their nature at his board and fireside, he had
given up his will into her unconscious keeping. She was so precisely
what all other women he had known were not. At first so distant, so
self-contained, so unapproachable in her pride; then as her passion grew
for books, so teachable, so industrious, so willing to listen to his
explanations and arguments; and lastly----

But that did not come at once. A long struggle took place between those
hours when he used to encourage her to come into his study and sit at
his side, and read from his books, and the more dangerous time still,
when he followed her into the drawing-room and sat at her side, and
sought to read, not from books, but from her eyes, the story of his own
future fate.

For, powerful as was his passion and deeply as his heart had been
touched, he did not yield to the thought of marriage which such a
passion involves, without a conflict. He would make her his child, the
heiress of his wealth, and the support of his old age; this was his
first resolve. But it did not last; the first sight he had of her on her
return from a visit to Buffalo, which he had insisted upon her making
during the time of his greatest mental conflict, had assured him that
this could never be; that he must be husband and she wife, or else
their relations must entirely cease. Perhaps the look with which she
met him had something to do with this. It was such a blushing,
humble--yes, for her, really humble and beautiful--look. He could not
withstand it. Though no one could have detected it in his manner, he
really succumbed in that hour. Doubt and hesitation flew to the winds,
and to make her his own became the sole aim and object of his life.

He did not, however, betray his purpose at once. Neighbors and friends
might and did suspect the state of his feelings, but to her he was
silent. That vague something which marked her off from the rest of her
sex, seemed to have deepened in her temporary sojourn from his side, and
whatever it meant of good or of ill, it taught him at least to be wary.
At last, was it with premeditation or was it in some moment of
uncontrollable impulse, he sp