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Punctuality at an affair of this kind being among the village virtues, the whole company was present within a surprisingly short time of the appointed hour. "Good-evening, Professor Valeyon; good-evening, my dear; how well-you look! Step up-stairs the first room on the right." "My pupil is to be here to-night, isn't he?" inquired the professor, as his daughter vanished.

But Bill Reynolds neither dealt in nor appreciated such refinements upon the good old ways of communicating sentiments. "Good-evening, Miss Valeyon," exclaimed he. "I guess we didn't expect to see one another again to-night. Pray don't imagine, miss, that I bear you any grudge. At times like this personal considerations don't count not with me.

Professor Valeyon had changed from a lusty winter into a broken, infirm, and marrowless thaw. He stood and watched her weep for a long while, bending his eyes upon her from beneath their heavy, impending brows. Heavy and impending they were still, but the vitality the sort of warm-hearted fierceness of his look was gone gone!

The professor's eyes met hers for a moment, and then she looked away. Presently she spoke again: "I'd a great deal rather leave this world as I've lived in it, for the last twenty years and more, than run any risk of making a blunder. I don't want things to change, Professor Valeyon; but if they do, it musn't be through any act of mine, or yours either."

It was no fault and no concern of mine; you and Professor Valeyon chose to deceive yourselves, and me. Nobody can be more innocent than I! Nobody can regret more, on some accounts, that our relationship is no closer!". In this last sentence the tone of mockery he had assumed was somewhat overstrained; a suspicion of underlying sincerity grated through it.

Some ten or twelve years after her establishment, Professor Valeyon and his family had moved into town. They had not taken up their quarters at Abbie's, though she could easily have accommodated them, as far as room went; a circumstance which caused all the more surprise in some quarters, because there seemed to have been some previous acquaintance between herself and the professor.

Look in my eyes, Sophie Valeyon, and tell me the name of what you see there!" Her sad, gray eyes, stern to herself, but tender and soft to him, as a cloud ready to melt in rain-drops, met his, which were alight with all the fire that an aroused and passionate spirit could kindle in them. She saw what she had never beheld before indeed, but the meaning of which no woman ever yet mistook.

"You are one of the daughters?" said he, with the sudden scrutinizing contraction of the eyebrows that often accompanied his questions. "There are two, aren't there? Which one are you?" "I'm Cornelia," replied she, provoked, as the words left her mouth, that she had not said "Miss Valeyon."

Bill Reynolds, however, being overcome with joy, at once gave intelligible manifestation of it. "Good enough!" cried he, slapping his leg, and looking from one to another with a giggle of relief. "Bully for her! Bless you, I knew Sophie Valeyon warn't dead. Speak again! I believe you. She'll tell us what's the matter, I guess."

One warm afternoon in June the warmest of the season thus far Professor Valeyon sat, smoking a black clay pipe, upon the broad balcony, which extended all across the back of his house, and overlooked three acres of garden, inclosed by a solid stone-wall.