This implied some skilful engineering, and Mr. Arthur Waring, having studied this subject fully abroad, came on from Boston, and took up his abode in Valley Mills village.  Of course, we being his only hope of society in the place, he made our acquaintance early.  I rather liked him; his manner was good, his perceptions acute, his tastes refined, and he had a certain strength of will that gave force to a character otherwise common-place.  Josephine liked him at once; she laid his shyness and brusquerie, which were only the expression of a dominant self-consciousness, to genuine modesty.  He was depressed and moody, because he was bored for want of acquaintance, and missed the adulation and caresses that he received at home as an only child; but Jo’s swift imagination painted this as the trait of a reflective and melancholy nature disgusted with the world, and pitied him accordingly; a mild way of misanthropic speech, that is apt to infest young men, added to this delusion; and, with all the energy of her sweet, earnest disposition, Josephine undertook his education,—­undertook to teach him faith and hope and charity, to set right his wayward soul, to renovate his bitter opinions, to make him a better and a happier man.

It is a well-known fact in the philosophy of the human mind, that it is apt to gain more by imparting than by receiving; and since philosophy, where it becomes fact, does not mercifully adjust its results to circumstance, but rushes on in implacable grooves, and clears its own track of whatever lies thereon by the summary process of crushing it to dust, it did not pause now for the pure intentions and tender heart which, in teaching another love to men, taught herself love to a man, and learnt far better than her pupil.

Mr. Waring was but a man; he did not love Josephine,—­he admired her; he loved nothing but himself, his quiet, his pleasure; and while she ministered to either, he regarded her with a species of affection that put on the mask of a diviner passion and used its language.  A thousand little things showed the man fully to me, a cool spectator; but she who needed most the discerning eye regarded this gay bubble as if it had been a jewel.

Perhaps I blame him too severely, for it was against the very heart of my heart that he sinned; possibly I do not allow for the temptation it was to a young man, quite alone in a country village, without resources, and accustomed to the flattery and caresses of a devoted mother, to find himself agreeable in the eyes of a noble and lovable woman.  Possibly, in his place, a better man might have sought her society, drawn her out of her reserve for his own delectation, confided in her, worked upon her pity, claimed her care, played on her simplicity and ignorance of the world, crept into her heart and won its strength of emotion and its generous affection,—­in short, made love to her, without saying so, honestly and openly.  Yet there are some men who would not have done it; and even yet, while I try to regard Arthur Waring with Christian charity, I feel that I cannot trust him, that I do not respect him,—­that, if I dared despise anything God has made, my first contempt would light on him.