unattended. He had always been liberally furnished with pocket-money,
for which, in his companionless state and Spartan habits, he had a
singular and unboyish contempt. Nevertheless, he always appeared dressed
with scrupulous neatness, and was rather distinguished-looking in his
older reserve and melancholy self-reliance.

Lounging one afternoon along the Alameda, a leafy avenue set out by the
early Mission Fathers between the village of San Jose and the convent
of Santa Clara, he saw a double file of young girls from the convent
approaching, on their usual promenade. A view of this procession
being the fondest ambition of the San Jose collegian, and especially
interdicted and circumvented by the good Fathers attending the college
excursions, Clarence felt for it the profound indifference of a boy who,
in the intermediate temperate zone of fifteen years, thinks that he
is no longer young and romantic! He was passing them with a careless
glance, when a pair of deep violet eyes caught his own under the broad
shade of a coquettishly beribboned hat, even as it had once looked at
him from the depths of a calico sunbonnet. Susy! He started, and would
have spoken; but with a quick little gesture of caution and a meaning
glance at the two nuns who walked at the head and foot of the file,
she indicated him to follow. He did so at a respectful distance, albeit
wondering. A little further on Susy dropped her handkerchief, and was
obliged to dart out and run back to the end of the file to recover it.
But she gave another swift glance of her blue eyes as she snatched it up
and demurely ran back to her place. The procession passed on, but when
Clarence reached the spot where she had paused he saw a three-cornered
bit of paper lying in the grass. He was too discreet to pick it up while
the girls were still in sight, but continued on, returning to it later.
It contained a few words in a schoolgirl's hand, hastily scrawled in
pencil: "Come to the south wall near the big pear-tree at six."