He asked who one or two girls were, and being answered, went on, “And who and what is that sitting a little apart there—­that strange, wild-looking girl?”

The lady teacher’s face changed; one would have said she was frightened or troubled.  The girl did not look up; she was winding a gold chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it as if in a kind of reverie.  Miss Darley drew close to the master, and placed her hand so as to hide her lips.

“Don’t look at her as if we were talking about her,” she whispered softly, “that is Elsie Venner.”

A girl of about seventeen, tall, slender, was Elsie Venner.  Black, piercing eyes, black hair, twisted in heavy braids, a face that one could not help looking at for its beauty, yet that one wanted to look away from, and could not, for those diamond eyes.

Those eyes were fixed on the lady teacher one morning not long after Langdon’s arrival.  Miss Darley turned her own away, and let them wander over the other scholars.  But the diamond eyes were on her still.  She turned the leaves of several of her books, and finally, following some ill-defined impulse which she could not resist, left her place, and went to the young girl’s desk.

“What do you want of me, Elsie Venner?” It was a strange question to put, for the girl had not signified that she wished the teacher to come to her.

“Nothing,” she cried.  “I thought I could make you come.”  The girl spoke in a low tone, a kind of half-whisper.

Bernard Langdon experienced the power of those diamond eyes one particular day that summer.

He had made up his mind to explore the dreaded Rattlesnake Ledge of the mountain, to examine the rocks, and perhaps to pick up an adventure in the zoological line; for he had on a pair of high, stout boots, and he carried a stick in his hand.

High up on one of the precipitous walls of rock he saw some tufts of flowers, and knew them for flowers Elsie Venner had brought into the school-room.  Presently on a natural platform where he sat down to rest, he found a hairpin.

He rose up from his seat to look round for other signs of a woman’s visits, and walked to the mouth of a cavern and looked into it.  His look was met by the glitter of two diamond eyes, shining out of the darkness, but gliding with a smooth, steady motion towards the light, and himself.  He stood fixed, struck dumb, staring back into them with dilating pupils and sudden numbness of fear that cannot move.  The two sparks of light came forward until they grew to circles of flame, and all at once lifted themselves up as if in angry surprise.

Then, for the first time, thrilled in Mr. Bernard’s ears the dreadful sound that nothing which breathes can hear unmoved—­the long, singing whir, as the huge, thick-bodied reptile shook his many-jointed rattle.  He waited as in a trance; and while he looked straight into the flaming eyes, it seemed to him that they were losing their light and terror, that they were growing tame and dull.  The charm was dissolving, the numbness passing away, he could move once more.  He heard a light breathing close to his ear, and, half turning, saw the face of Elsie Venner, looking motionless into the reptile’s eyes, which had shrunk and faded under the stronger enchantment of her own.