Elsie had been reasonably careful.  She had locked up her papers, whatever they might be.  There was little else that promised to reward his curiosity, but he cast his eye on everything.  There was a clasp-Bible among her books.  Dick wondered if she ever unclasped it.  There was a book of hymns; it had her name in it, and looked as if it might have been often read;—­what the diablo had Elsie to do with hymns?

Mr. Richard Venner was in an observing and analytical state of mind, it will be noticed, or he might perhaps have been touched with the innocent betrayals of the poor girl’s chamber.  Had she, after all, some human tenderness in her heart?  That was not the way he put the question,—­but whether she would take seriously to this schoolmaster, and if she did, what would be the neatest and surest and quickest way of putting a stop to all that nonsense.  All this, however, he could think over more safely in his own quarters.  So he stole softly to the window, and, catching the end of the leathern thong, regained his own chamber and drew in the lasso.

It needs only a little jealousy to set a man on who is doubtful in love or wooing, or to make him take hold of his courting in earnest.  As soon as Dick had satisfied himself that the young schoolmaster was his rival in Elsie’s good graces, his whole thoughts concentrated themselves more than ever on accomplishing his great design of securing her for himself.  There was no time to be lost.  He must come into closer relations with her, so as to withdraw her thoughts from this fellow, and to find out more exactly what was the state of her affections, if she had any.  So he began to court her company again, to propose riding with her, to sing to her, to join her whenever she was strolling about the grounds, to make himself agreeable, according to the ordinary understanding of that phrase, in every way which seemed to promise a chance for succeeding in that amiable effort.

The girl treated him more capriciously than ever.  She would be sullen and silent, or she would draw back fiercely at some harmless word or gesture, or she would look at him with her eyes narrowed in such a strange way and with such a wicked light in them that Dick swore to himself they were too much for him, and would leave her for the moment.  Yet she tolerated him, almost as a matter of necessity, and sometimes seemed to take a kind of pleasure in trying her power upon him.  This he soon found out, and humored her in the fancy that she could exercise a kind of fascination over him,—­though there were times in which he actually felt an influence he could not understand, an effect of some peculiar expression about her, perhaps, but still centring in those diamond eyes of hers which it made one feel so curiously to look into.