What did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel? I naturally

asked myself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her;

and, as naturally, I sought the answer to the inquiry in his

countenance. He had already withdrawn his eye from the Peri, and

was looking at a humble tuft of daisies which grew by the wicket.

"A lovely evening, but late for you to be out alone," he said, as he

crushed the snowy heads of the closed flowers with his foot.

"Oh, I only came home from S-" (she mentioned the name of a large

town some twenty miles distant) "this afternoon. Papa told me you

had opened your school, and that the new mistress was come; and so I

put on my bonnet after tea, and ran up the valley to see her: this

is she?" pointing to me.

"It is," said St. John.

"Do you think you shall like Morton?" she asked of me, with a direct

and naive simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if child-like.

"I hope I shall. I have many inducements to do so."

"Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected?"

"Quite."

"Do you like your house?"

"Very much."

"Have I furnished it nicely?"

"Very nicely, indeed."

"And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood?"

"You have indeed. She is teachable and handy." (This then, I

thought, is Miss Oliver, the heiress; favoured, it seems, in the

gifts of fortune, as well as in those of nature! What happy

combination of the planets presided over her birth, I wonder?) "I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes," she added. "It

will be a change for me to visit you now and then; and I like a

change. Mr. Rivers, I have been SO gay during my stay at S-. Last

night, or rather this morning, I was dancing till two o'clock. The

-th regiment are stationed there since the riots; and the officers

are the most agreeable men in the world: they put all our young

knife-grinders and scissor merchants to shame."

It seemed to me that Mr. St. John's under lip protruded, and his

upper lip curled a moment. His mouth certainly looked a good deal

compressed, and the lower part of his face unusually stern and

square, as the laughing girl gave him this information. He lifted

his gaze, too, from the daisies, and turned it on her. An

unsmiling, a searching, a meaning gaze it was. She answered it with

a second laugh, and laughter well became her youth, her roses, her

dimples, her bright eyes.




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