Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/369

Rh opinions, was stimulated by his society. She talked better to him, and before him, than under any other circumstances. She yielded to him in many matters, small and great, as she had yielded when he was her teacher. She knew, also, her great power over him. In the bottom of her heart she knew that he loved her, though never once had he said to her a word which could offend her delicate sense of right. But one day, in a sudden and irrepressible mood, he had poured out to Mrs. Lawton such passionate avowals of his long admiration and affection for Susan that Bell had been terrified, and had spoken to him with the utmost severity. He pleaded so persistently to be forgiven, and moreover argued so plausibly that she had totally misconceived the real meaning of all he had said, that he made Bell feel ashamed of having resented his words, and half guilty herself of having misinterpreted them. Wily Edward Balloure! He thought that Bell would tell Susan of their conversation, and he watched the next day for some trace of its influence upon her. No trace was there. Her manner was as cordial as ever,—no more, no less so; and the professor could never make up his mind whether she had been told or not.

One day when Tom had been taking unusual pains about some matters for Susan, she looked up at him and said with a sudden and shame-stricken sense of how much she was perpetually receiving at his hands:—