tended to render their meetings less frequent, though Olive was still her
nearest friend. Cyprian was himself a little shy, and rather held to
Myrtle through his sister than by any true intimacy directly with
herself. Of the other young men of the village Gifted Hopkins was
perhaps the most fervent of her admirers, as he had repeatedly shown by
effusions in verse, of which, under the thinnest of disguises, she was
the object.

William Murray Bradshaw, ten years older than herself, a young man of
striking aspect and claims to exceptional ability, had kept his eye on
her of late; but it was generally supposed that he would find a wife in
the city, where he was in the habit of going to visit a fashionable
relative, Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24 Carat Place. She, at any rate,
understood very well that he meant, to use his own phrase, "to go in for
a corner lot,"--understanding thereby a young lady with possessions and
without encumbrances. If the old man had only given his money to Myrtle,
William Murray Bradshaw would have made sure of her; but she was not
likely ever to get much of it. Miss Silence Withers, it was understood,
would probably leave her money as the Rev. Mr. Stoker, her spiritual
director, should indicate, and it seemed likely that most of it would go
to a rising educational institution where certain given doctrines were to
be taught through all time, whether disproved or not, and whether those
who taught them believed them or not, provided only they would say they
believed them.

Nobody had promised to say masses for her soul if she made this
disposition of her property, or pledged the word of the Church that she
should have plenary absolution. But she felt that she would be making
friends in Influential Quarters by thus laying up her treasure, and that
she would be safe if she had the good-will of the ministers of her sect.