by the divining-rod of Love. But many students gnashed their teeth, and,
as we have said, Miss Christina Eldridge alone, of all the dear five
hundred, said, "What possessed _him_?"


II.

The summer vacation was over, and students, more or less reluctantly,
had returned to college and academy. The professor came back in a
brand-new and very becoming suit of clothes; his hair and beard had been
trimmed by a fashionable barber, and his old-fashioned high "stock"
exchanged for a modern scarf, in the centre of which gleamed a modern
scarf-pin. He ran lightly up the steps of the academy and inquired for
Miss May. Courtesy, as his uneasy conscience told him, dictated an
inquiry for Miss Eldridge also, but he compounded with conscience: he
would ask to see her after he had seen Rosamond.

"Why, how very nice you look! You are really handsome!" And the
dignified professor was turned about, as if he had been a graven image,
by two soft little hands, which he caught in his own, and--so forth.

She was very sure now that she loved him, as in a certain sense she did.
But she would not consent to an immediate marriage, nor to the building
of a miniature palace for her reception. She owed it to Miss Eldridge,
she said, to fulfil her engagement and not to go away just as she was
beginning to be really useful. And as for a house, would it not be
pleasanter to live in lodgings and be free to come and go as they would?
So his wishes, as usual, were deferred to hers. The long fall evenings
began, and he brought, at her request, carefully-selected "improving"
books, to be interrupted, as he read, by earnest questions, such as,--