“Possibly he has been one,—­or is one,” said the Judge,—­smiling as men smile whose lips have often been freighted with the life and death of their fellow-creatures.  “I met them riding the other day.  Perhaps Dudley is right, if it pleases her to have a companion.  What will happen, though, if he makes love to her?  Will Elsie be easily taken with such a fellow?  You young folks are supposed to know more about these matters than we middle-aged people.”

“Nobody can tell.  Elsie is not like anybody else.  The girls that have seen most of her think she hates men, all but ‘Dudley,’ as she calls her father.  Some of them doubt whether she loves him.  They doubt whether she can love anything human, except perhaps the old black woman that has taken care of her since she was a baby.  The village people have the strangest stories about her:  you know what they call her?”

She whispered three words in her father’s ear.  The Judge changed color as she spoke, sighed deeply, and was silent as if lost in thought for a moment.

“I remember her mother,” he said, “so well!  A sweeter creature never lived.  Elsie has something of her in her look, but those are not the Dudley eyes.  They were dark, but soft, in all I ever saw of the race.  Her father’s are dark too, but mild, and even tender, I should say.  I don’t know what there is about Elsie’s,—­but do you know, my dear, I find myself curiously influenced by them?  I have had to face a good many sharp eyes and hard ones,—­murderers’ eyes and pirates’,—­men that had to be watched in the bar, where they stood on trial, for fear they should spring on the prosecuting officers like tigers,—­but I never saw such eyes as Elsie’s; and yet they have a kind of drawing virtue or power about them,—­I don’t know what else to call it:  have you never observed this?”

His daughter smiled in her turn.

“Never observed it?  Why, of course, nobody could be with Elsie Venner and not observe it.  There are a good many other strange things about her:  did you ever notice how she dresses?”

“Why, handsomely enough, I should think,” the Judge answered.  “I suppose she dresses as she likes, and sends to the city for what she wants.  What do you mean in particular?  We men notice effects in dress, but not much in detail.”

“You never noticed the colors and patterns of her dresses?  You never remarked anything curious about her ornaments?  Well!  I don’t believe you men know, half the time, whether a lady wears a ninepenny collar or a thread-lace cape worth a thousand dollars.  I don’t believe you know a silk dress from a bombazine one.  I don’t believe you can tell whether a woman is in black or in colors, unless you happen to know she is a widow.  Elsie Venner has a strange taste in dress, let me tell you.  She sends for the oddest patterns of stuffs, and picks out the most curious things at the jeweller’s, whenever she goes to town with her father.  They say the old Doctor tells him to let