Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/28

 Reynolds, of the regular army, had carried her a mile, over rough country roads, and with her broken foot in a hastily improvised sling, to the farm-house nearest the scene of the accident in which she had received the injury.

It had been no easy task, for she was then an athletic young person of sixteen. "Jack," the brother whom she had always loved and from whom she had parted with the one great wrench attendant upon her separation from the world, had been enshrined in her regard as the strongest and manliest as well as the most admirable of men. Why she should now recall him so suddenly and vividly, especially in connection with that distant, almost forgotten mishap, was inexplicable. Perhaps it was because Professor Varick seemed so strong. "He could have done it, too," she thought, looking at the sinewy figure on the platform, "and he would have done it as well and as gently. He looks so kind," her semi-conscious reflections had run on, "and very refined. The expression of his eyes is charming. So is his smile. Surely, surely, somewhere I have seen it before."

Her thoughts recurred to the teasing likeness as the lessons went on, and then drifted away to that former life of hers, sometimes as