Before the unfortunate Bly could explain or protest, the young girl
lifted her gray eyes to his. Whether she had perceived and
understood his perplexity he could not tell; but the swift shy
glance was at once appealing, assuring, and intelligent. She was
certainly unlike her mother and brother. Acting with his usual
impulsiveness, he forgot his previous resolution, and before he
left had engaged to begin his occupation of the room on the
following day.

The next afternoon found him installed. Yet, after he had unpacked
his modest possessions and put them away, after he had placed his
few books on the shelves, where they looked glaringly trivial and
frivolous beside the late tenant's severe studies; after he had set
out his scanty treasures in the way of photographs and some curious
mementoes of his wandering life, and then quickly put them back
again with a sudden angry pride at exposing them to the
unsympathetic incongruity of the other ornaments, he, nevertheless,
felt ill at ease. He glanced in vain around the pretty room. It
was not the delicately flowered wall-paper; it was not the white
and blue muslin window-curtains gracefully tied up with blue and
white ribbons; it was not the spotless bed, with its blue and white
festooned mosquito-net and flounced valances, and its medallion
portrait of an unknown bishop at the back; it was not the few
tastefully framed engravings of certain cardinal virtues, "The Rock
of Ages," and "The Guardian Angel"; it was not the casts in relief
of "Night" and "Morning"; it was certainly not the cosy dimity-
covered arm-chairs and sofa, nor yet the clean-swept polished grate
with its cheerful fire sparkling against the chill afternoon sea-
fogs without; neither was it the mere feminine suggestion, for that
touched a sympathetic chord in his impulsive nature; nor the