ysm under the influence of the Rev. Mr.
Stoker's assiduous exhortations; but since she had broken off with him,
Miss Silence had looked upon her as little better than a backslider. And
now that the girl was beginning to show the tendencies which seemed to
come straight down to her from the belle of the last century, (whose
rich physical developments seemed to the under-vitalized spinster as
in themselves a kind of offence against propriety,) the forlorn woman
folded her thin hands and looked on hopelessly, hardly venturing a
remonstrance for fear of some new explosion. As for Cynthia, she was
comparatively easy since she had, through Mr. Byles Gridley, upset the
minister's questionable arrangement 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 th