The girls all looked at Elsie, whenever they could steal a glance unperceived, and many of them were struck with this singular expression her features wore.  They had long whispered it around among each other that she had a liking for the master; but there were too many of them of whom something like this could be said, to make it very remarkable.  Now, however, when so many little hearts were fluttering at the thought of the peril through which the handsome young master had so recently passed, they were more alive than ever to the supposed relation between him and the dark school-girl.  Some had supposed there was a mutual attachment between them; there was a story that they were secretly betrothed, in accordance with the rumor which had been current in the village.  At any rate, some conflict was going on in that still, remote, clouded soul, and all the girls who looked upon her face were impressed and awed as they had never been before by the shadows that passed over it.

One of these girls was more strongly arrested by Elsie’s look than the others.  This was a delicate, pallid creature, with a high forehead, and wide-open pupils, which looked as if they could take in all the shapes that flit in what, to common eyes, is darkness,—­a girl said to be clairvoyant under certain influences.  In the recess, as it was called, or interval of suspended studies in the middle of the forenoon, this girl carried her autograph-book,—­for she had one of those indispensable appendages of the boarding-school miss of every degree,—­and asked Elsie to write her name in it.  She had an irresistible feeling, that, sooner or later, and perhaps very soon, there would attach an unusual interest to this autograph.  Elsie took the pen and wrote, in her sharp Italian hand,

Elsie Venner, Infelix.

It was a remembrance, doubtless, of the forlorn queen of the “AEneid”; but its coming to her thought in this way confirmed the sensitive school-girl in her fears for Elsie, and she let fall a tear upon the page before she closed it.

Of course, the keen and practised observation of Helen Darley could not fail to notice the change of Elsie’s manner and expression.  She had long seen that she was attracted to the young master, and had thought, as the old Doctor did, that any impression which acted upon her affections might be the means of awakening a new life in her singularly isolated nature.  Now, however, the concentration of the poor girl’s thoughts upon the one object which had had power to reach her deeper sensibilities was so painfully revealed in her features, that Helen began to fear once more, lest Mr. Bernard, in escaping the treacherous violence of an assassin, had been left to the equally dangerous consequences of a violent, engrossing passion in the breast of a young creature whose love it would be ruin to admit and might be deadly to reject.  She knew her own heart too well to fear that any jealousy might mingle with her new apprehensions.  It