village streets with that elderly lady who haunted the Japha mansion. The former because it recalled a life around which her fancies still played with dangerous persistency, and the latter because it aroused vain and inexplicable conjectures as to that person’s strange and lingering look in her direction. Otherwise she was happy; finding in this simple village-life a meaning and a purpose which her short but passionate outlook on a broader field, had taught her, perhaps, both to detect and comprehend. She no longer walked solitary with nature. The woods, the mountains with all their varying panoply of exuberant verdure, had acquired a human significance. At her side went the memories of beloved faces, the thoughts of trusted friends. From the clouds looked forth a living eye, and in the sound of rustling leaf and singing streamlet, spake the voices of human longing and human joy.
Her aunts had explained their position to Paula and she had responded by expressing her determination to be a teacher. But they would not hear of that at present, and while she waited their pleasure in the matter, she did what she could to assist them in their simple home-life and daily duties, lending her beauty to tasks that would have made the eyes of some of her quondam admirers open with surprise, if only they could have followed the action of her hands, after having once caught a glimpse of the face that brightened above them. And so the summer months went by and September came.
There was to be an entertainment in the village and Paula was to assist. The idea had come from her aunt and was not to be rejected. In one of the strange incomprehensible moods which sometimes came upon her at this time, she had written a poem, and nothing would do but that she must read it before the assembled company of neighbors and friends, that were to be gathered at the Squire’s house on this gala evening. She did not wish to do it. The sacred sense of possession passes when we uncover our treasure to another’s eyes, giving way to a lower feeling not to be courted by one of Paula’s sensitive nature. Besides she