"I am heartily glad you like her," said Eileen; "she is a dear old thing. I cannot bear the way Lettie goes on about her. Lettie is my own cousin; but she disappoints me terribly in her att.i.tude towards Belle.

But I can prophesy that you and Belle Acheson will be firm friends."

"I respect all people who are really earnest," said Leslie in a grave voice.

"By the way, do you know why Annie Colchester has gone up to town?" said Eileen suddenly.

"Annie Colchester gone to London?" said Leslie, starting and turning slightly pale.

"Yes: didn't you know? We met her two hours ago on her way to the station. She will return by the last train this evening. She told us that Miss Lauderdale had given her leave. Miss Lauderdale was very good to her, and she has gone off in the highest spirits. She asked if we had any messages."

Leslie said nothing more; but she slowly entered North Hall, went up to her own room, and sat down by the open window. Some of the fear of the night before visited her. What was Annie's motive in going up to town?

Was she really only looking for one of her own papers in Leslie's desk in the middle of the night? A queer sense of coming danger and calamity oppressed her. Her head ached, and she scarcely knew her own sensations.

CHAPTER XX

NOT A BIT LIKE IT.

At the appointed hour, Leslie Gilroy went across to Belle Acheson's room. That young lady was in and received her with a fair amount of graciousness.

"Sit down, pray," she said. "You will like that chair which faces the view. I prefer the one with my back to it. That view upsets me when I am very busy over my studies. But enough about Ego for the present. Let me look at you steadily."

Leslie seated herself on the very stiff and uncomfortable chair pointed out by her companion, and Belle eyed her from head to foot.

"Yours is a very great temptation," she said at last slowly. "I pity you from the bottom of my heart."

"Mine is a very great temptation!" repeated Leslie. She colored, and for a moment felt slightly alarmed. Was it possible that Belle knew about her anxiety with regard to Annie? But her companion's next remark dispelled this illusion.

"I refer to your good looks," she said. "Those like you who are condemned to the trial of regular features, bright eyes, and ma.s.ses of hair, have a struggle to fulfil their part worthily in life's battle.

But there, I will add no more."

"I totally and completely disagree with you," cried Leslie. "If you and I are to be friends, you must allow me to speak out quite frankly. Miss Acheson, I heartily respect you. I know that you are earnest and clever, and--"

"Don't flatter; a flatterer is indeed a false friend."

"But I am not flattering you. I do think what I have just said to you most truly and sincerely; but now I must speak on my own account. I have been taught by a very wise and good mother to regard a pleasant and pretty face as a blessing, as a talent sent from G.o.d. I have to use it aright in influencing for good my fellowmen. Beauty is a power which can be used for good. If one thinks of it in that way one need never be vain."

"And you have the audacity to tell me that you think yourself good-looking?"

"I do," answered Leslie calmly. "I know I have a very pretty face; it would be the height of affectation for me to say anything else. But do not let us talk any more about personal appearance. Surely you did not want me to visit you to discuss my looks?"

"By no means. From Eileen or Marjorie the words you have just uttered would disgust me so completely that I should ask the one who had so spoken to leave the room; but you have something queer about you, something earnest and out of the common; you are not an ordinary girl, and cannot be judged by ordinary standards. I am convinced that you will never take life frivolously."

"I hope I never shall, Belle."

"Belle! You call me Belle, and you only met me for the first time yesterday!"

"I hope you do not think me presuming," said Leslie-she held out her hand to Belle as she spoke-"but I feel somehow that we are going to be friends."

Belle's thin hand was immediately outstretched, and for an instant she clasped Leslie's-she then let it drop with a sigh.

"Why had I not a sister like you?" she said. "It is hard to go through life without sympathy, and I get little."

"If you will allow me, I will give you plenty in the future."

"If I will allow you! But there, perhaps this is a temptation. Are we really to be friends? If so, you will promise not to tempt me."

"In what way? How can I?"

"You will not insert the thin end of the wedge; you will not cause me to allow luxuries to creep into my life? Oh, I have set myself so strenuously against all that sort of thing. I live so fixedly by rule.

Now, a carpet to the floor, an easy-chair to lounge in, curtains to the windows to keep out the racking heat of the midday sun-all these things would be sins in a person like me. You will not insist, too, upon my spending money-money, that precious gift-on dress. Oh, I a.s.sure you the simplest covering does. You know how short our lives are; and our bodies, are they not just clothes for the soul? Why need we pamper the body. It is the soul that lives forever; it alone requires careful attention."

"Why, Belle, you ought to have been in a nunnery."

"There, now, you are laughing at me."

"I am not, indeed; but I do feel that the soul is more comfortable, and more likely to thrive, if it is lodged in a nicely cared for body. Why should it not have a nice, pretty house to live in? And as to dress, I do hope you will allow me to say one thing: that a dress, however simple, ought to be whole and decent-looking and clean."

"Oh, of course, I admit that; but is anything the matter with mine?"

"Have you a clothes brush, dear: I should so like to brush off the mud from the tail of your skirt."

"Thank you, thank you; but I cannot permit it. You are now verging into the commonplace. You resemble that terrible young person, Let.i.tia Chetwynd. She is really, I a.s.sure you, one of the trials of my life. She is a b.u.t.terfly, impossible to be suppressed. She visits me in my room and insists upon talking her frivolous nonsense until my head aches. I repeat the words of the great masters of literature, under my breath, when she is present. She sees me muttering, and yet she will not go.

There she sits with needle and thread repairing my garments, and I-I permit it."

"I think she is awfully kind to you," said Leslie. "You ought to be grateful."

"I'm not-I can't be. She and I are abhorrent each to the other. As the poles are we asunder. But do not let us waste these precious moments talking of her. I want so much to hear about yourself-your ambitions, your hopes, your desires. What, for instance, are your aims with regard to literature? You will take honors, of course?"

"I don't know," replied Leslie. "It requires a great deal of talent to take honors in work like mine; but I will admit that I am struggling very hard with that object in view."

"Then, let me help you. Let us talk over our mutual studies. Here, sit close to me, draw up your chair near mine. It is sometimes permitted for those whose souls are akin to clasp their earthly hands together. Now then, let us speak. Ah! when you are almost intoxicated with those great and stimulating thoughts, does not your soul burn, does not you brain seem to expand until it almost bursts?"

"Never," said Leslie: "if it did I should feel very much alarmed about myself."

Belle uttered a sigh.

"We are differently affected by these things, I see," she remarked. "I cannot explain to you the intense, the pa.s.sionate pleasure I feel when I am engaged over hard mental work. There is no stimulant like it. You are not laughing at me?"

"Indeed I am not," said Leslie. "I said before that I respected you as I respect anyone else who is wholly in earnest."

"In earnest," said Belle; "yes, indeed, I am that. I am ever thinking of Kingsley's pa.s.sionate words, 'Be earnest, earnest, earnest; mad if thou wilt.' Oh, Miss Gilroy, do think of the frivolity of the greater number of our s.e.x. Even in this house of learning frivolity creeps in."

Leslie smiled and endeavored to draw her companion into more reasonable conversation.