It took so long to explain fully this great project that Albert staid until nearly supper-time, forgetting the burden of his sister’s unhappy future in the interest of science and philanthropy.  And even when he rose to go, Charlton turned back to look again at a “prairie sun-flower” which Helen Minorkey had dissected while he spoke, and, finding something curious, perhaps in the fiber, he proposed to bring his microscope over in the evening and examine it—­a proposition very grateful to Helen, who had nothing but ennui to expect in Metropolisville, and who was therefore delighted.  Delighted is a strong word for one so cool:  perhaps it would be better to say that she was relieved and pleased at the prospect of passing an evening with so curious and interesting a companion.  For Charlton was both curious and interesting to her.  She sympathized with his intellectual activity, and she was full of wonder at his intense moral earnestness.

As for Albert, botany suddenly took on a new interest in his eyes.  He had hitherto regarded it as a science for girls.  But now he was so profoundly desirous of discovering the true character of the tissue in the plant which Miss Minorkey had dissected, that it seemed to him of the utmost importance to settle it that very evening.  His mother for the first time complained of his going out, and seemed not very well satisfied about something.  He found that he was likely to have a good opportunity, after supper, to speak to Isabel Marlay in regard to his sister and her lover, but somehow the matter did not seem so exigent as it had.  The night before, he had determined that it was needful to check the intimacy before it went farther, that every day of delay increased the peril; but things often look differently under different circumstances, and now the most important duty in life for Albert Charlton was the immediate settlement of a question in structural botany by means of microscopic investigation.  Albert was at this moment a curious illustration of the influence of scientific enthusiasm, for he hurriedly relieved his hat of its little museum, ate his supper, got out his microscope, and returned to the hotel.  He placed the instrument on the old piano, adjusted the object, and pedagogically expounded to Miss Minorkey the true method of observing.  Microscopy proved very entertaining to both.  Albert did not feel sure that it might not become a life-work with him.  It would be a delightful thing to study microscopic botany forever, if he could have Helen Minorkey to listen to his enthusiastic expositions.  From her science the transition to his was easy, and they studied under every combination of glasses the beautiful lace of a dragon-fly’s wing, and the irregular spots on a drab grasshopper which ran by chance half-across one of his eyes.  The thrifty landlord had twice looked in at the door in hope of finding the parlor empty, intending in which case to put out the lamp.  But I can not tell how long