hesitation. I can give no better reason for it than that I have been over-anxious about Laura lately—and anxiety, Mr. Gilmore, unsettles the strongest of us.”
She left me abruptly, her naturally firm voice faltering as she spoke those last words. A sensitive, vehement, passionate nature— a woman of ten thousand in these trivial, superficial times. I had known her from her earliest years—I had seen her tested, as she grew up, in more than one trying family crisis, and my long experience made me
to the use of the boys, I suggested the propriety of making a last inquiry of the schoolmaster, whom we might presume to be, in virtue of his office, the most intelligent man in the place.
“I am afraid the schoolmaster must have been occupied with his scholars,” said Miss Halcombe, “just at the time