thinking about him quite often. He was her first recognized lover.
Indeed, few had found opportunity to give more than admiring glances to
the little nun, who thus far had been secluded almost continuously in
the safest of all cloisters--a country home. It was a decided novelty
that a young man, almost six feet in height, should be looking
unutterable things in her direction whenever she was present. She wished
he wouldn't, but since he would, she could not help thinking about him,
and how she could manage to make him "behave sensibly."

She did not maintain her air of indifference very perfectly, however,
for she had never been schooled by experience, and was acting solely on
the intuitions of her sex. She could not forbear giving a quick glance
occasionally to see how he was taking his lesson. At times he was
scowling and angry, and then she could maintain her part without
difficulty; again he would look so miserable that, out of pity, she
would relent into a half smile, but immediately reproach herself for
being "so foolish."

Haldane's manner soon attracted Mrs. Arnot's attention, notwithstanding
his effort to disguise from her his feeling and a little observation on
the part of the experienced matron enabled her to guess how matters
stood. While Mrs. Arnot was perplexed and provoked by this new
complication in Haldane's case, she was too kindly in her nature not to
feel sorry for him. She was also so well versed in human nature as to be
aware that she could not sit down and coolly talk him out of his folly.

Besides it was not necessarily folly. The youth was but following a law
of nature, and following it, too, in much the same manner as had his
fathers before him since the beginning of time. There would not be any
thing essentially wrong in an attachment between these young people, if