desired to act the part of a humble assistant of Mrs. Arnot, whom she
regarded as Haldane's good angel; and she was quite as disinterested in
her hope for the young man's moral improvement as her aunt herself.

The task, moreover, was doubly pleasing since she could perform it in a
way that was so womanly and agreeable. She could scarcely have given
Haldane a plain talk on the evils of fast living to save her life, but
if she could keep young men from going to destruction by smiling upon
them, by games of backgammon and by music, she felt in the mood to be a
missionary all her life, especially if she could have so safe and
attractive a field of labor as her aunt's back parlor.

But the poor child would soon learn that perverse human nature is much
the same in a drawing-room and a tenement-house, and that all who seek
to improve it are doomed to meet much that is excessively annoying and
discouraging.

The simple-hearted girl no more foresaw what might result from her
smiles than an ignorant child would anticipate the consequences of fire
falling on grains of harmless-looking black sand. She had never seen
passion kindling and flaming till it seemed like a scorching fire, and
had not learned by experience that in some circumstances her smiles
might be like incendiary sparks to powder.

In seeking to manage her "difficult case," Mrs. Arnot should have
foreseen the danger of employing such a fascinating young creature as
her assistant; but in these matters the wisest often err, and only
comprehend the evil after it has occurred. Laura was but a child in
years, having passed her fifteenth birthday only a few months previous,
and Haldane seemed to the lady scarcely more than a boy. She did not