The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-07-07

l He was drawn, in quite another way I by another woman ar the same time | It was In the first day, when he and i Helen Darley were in the classroom together waiting for the pupils to as- l semble. The room had become we'll I filled when there was a slight pause and light step was heard in the pas- sage. A girl of about IT entered. She was tall and slender, but her figure was perfectly rounded and she walked 1 and moved with a strange undulation | of motion.
 1 She was splendid. scowling beauty, black-browed, with a flash of white teeth when her lips parted. She went | to her seat, which she had moved a short distance apart from the others, and began playing with a gold chain. coiiing and uncoiling It. One wanted to look at her face for it's beauty: hay ing looked, one wanted instinctiveiy to look away but could not, for the rather small. bsack eyes had com | polling glitter in them, inhumanly like | the gleam of a diamond.
 The eyes were fixed on Helen now. She turned hers away and let them wander over the other pupils, but despite herself let them turn back for a single glance at the wild beauty. | The eyes were still upon Her. She | tTleO tO turn over the pages OL d DOOk and put her handkerchief to her fore head. on which she felt growing a cold moisture. Then, following an impulse that she could not resist. she left her place and went to the girls desk. | What do you want of me. Elsie Ven- \ ner?" she asked.
 Nothing" replied the girl in a low voice. T thought I could make you 1 come"
 l cL a.sA ,. .A S ...-..-A... of one or two consonants was curiously imperfect. She offered the teacher rare hill flower that grew in only one I spot-Rattlesnake Ledge. on The Mountain" As she took it Helen felt the girls fingers touch hers. They | were cold-a shocking. chilling cold. | doubly strange in girl of such an organization.
 Helen had to obey an unreasoning instinct to escape from the school room. When she reached her chamber | her first act was to throw the flower into the fireplace and rake the embers | over it. Then she washed the tips ot her fingers as if she had been another Lady Macbeth.
 Bernard, left alone. felt the same strange influence. There was some- thing about her which both attracted and repelled him. He could tell with
 
 eyes were fixed upon him. The girl, for her part, evidently was strongly at- tracted to the new master. She exert ed herself to make him conde to her or look toward her.
 When they were alone together later Helen said: Tell mel am weak and nervous. I know--but are there not some natures born so out of parallel with the lines of natures laws that ohn nf mi hrf | them right7"
 Each of us Is only the sum of a long double column of figures going back to the first parents" replied Bernard, "and if the columns don't add up right it is commonly because we can't make out the figures. We are mainly nothing but the answer to long sum in adition and subtraction. No doubt there are people born with every impulse at an angle to the paral- lels of nature, as you call them. Slight obliquities are what we have most to do with in education. Peniten- tIaries and insane asylums take care of most of the truly right-angled cases"
 There were only two classes In Rock land who were worth reckoning social ly: the mansion honse people" and the two story people.r The mansion
 
 families. The New England mansion house has a great, respectable width of yard front and its owners have great, respectable widths of clean shirt front. The two-story houses are trim 'genteeP' and crowded closely to the street. Their parlors are the most tomblike, melancholy places that can be found anywhere among the abodes of living peoples
 In Rockland the mansion houses and most of the two-story houses stood under elms. No other Gothic arch compares for a moment with that formed by two American elms When one looks through a long double row of these he beholds a temple not made with hands, fairer than any minister, with it's clustering stems and flower ing capitals, than ever grew in stone.
 Among the mansion houses in Rock land stood one that was too new. too swaggering, too brightly painted to be of them. It belonged to Colonel Sproule (militia rank) From this house there issued soon to Bernard Langdon:
 MT. and Mrs. Colonel Sprowle's com pliments to Mir. Langdon and request the pleasure of his company at a social entertainment on Wednesday evening next.
 Boy directed to wait for an answer"
 And when Bernard replied that: "Mr Langdon has the pleasure of accept ing Mir and Mrs. Colonel Sprowle's polite invitation for Wednesday next" the Brahmin was launced in Rockland society.
 The Sprowle party was for the bringing out" of Miss Matilda, sole daughter of the house. "Everybod was invited-so said those who had invitations. But the expressing ques- tion still was: Will the mansion house people come?'
 The question was answered satis- faceorily. The mansion-house people came. Chief among them was Dudley Venner. with his wild beauty of a daughter on his arm. She was, indeed, an apparition-so unlike other girls that 1t seemed perfectly natural that when she moved the groups should part to let her pass through them. and that she should carry all looks and thoughts with her.
 Her heavy black hair lay in a long, braided coil with a golden pin shot through it like a javelin, Around her neck was a golden torque, a round cordllke chain such as the Gauls used to wear; the Dying Gladiator has it. Her dress was a grayish watered silk her collar was pinned with flashing diamond brooch. On her wrists she wore bracelets--one was a circle of enameled scales and the other might have been