"To be sure; but there are times-"
"Yes, there are times when the odds seem rather
heavy. I have noticed that myself."
She smiled, but for an instant the sad look came into
her eyes,-a look that vaguely but insistently suggested
another time and place.
"I want you to come back," I said boldly, for the
train was very near, and I felt that the eyes of the Sisters
were upon us. "You can not go away where I shall
not find you!"
I did not know who this girl was, her home, or her
relation to the school, but I knew that her life and
mine had touched strangely; that her eyes were blue,
and that her voice had called to me twice through the
dark, in mockery once and in warning another time,
and that the sense of having known her before, of having
looked into her eyes, haunted me. The youth in
her was so luring; she was at once so frank and so
guarded,-breeding and the taste and training of an
ampler world than that of Annandale were so evidenced
in the witchery of her voice, in the grace and ease that
marked her every motion, in the soft gray tone of hat,
dress and gloves, that a new mood, a new hope and
faith sang in my pulses. There, on that platform, I felt
again the sweet heartache I had known as a boy, when
spring first warmed the Vermont hillsides and the
mountains sent the last snows singing in joy of their
release down through the brook-beds and into the wakened
heart of youth.
She met my eyes steadily.
"If I thought there was the slightest chance of my
ever seeing you again I shouldn't be talking to you
here. But I thought, I thought it would be good fun
to see how you really talked to a grown-up. So I am
risking the displeasure of these good Sisters just to test
your conversational powers, Mr. Glenarm. You see how
perfectly frank I am."
"But you forget that I can follow you; I don't intend
to sit down in this hole and dream about you. You
can't go anywhere but I shall follow and find you."
"That is finely spoken, Squire Glenarm! But I imagine
you are hardly likely to go far from Glenarm
very soon. It isn't, of course, any of my affair; and yet
I don't hesitate to say that I feel perfectly safe from
pursuit!"-and she laughed her little low laugh that
was delicious in its mockery.
I felt the blood mounting to my cheek. She knew,
then, that I was virtually a prisoner at Glenarm, and
for once in my life, at least, I was ashamed of my folly
that had caused my grandfather to hold and check me
from the grave, as he had never been able to control me
in his life. The whole countryside knew why I was at
Glenarm, and that did not matter; but my heart rebelled
at the thought that this girl knew and mocked me with
her knowledge.