By the time Professor Valeyon had remounted the granite steps, he was quite ready to do justice to his breakfast.  Cornelia came singing down-stairs, with a full-blown tea-rose in her hair, and looking as if she had already breakfasted upon the greater part of the day’s sunshine.  She reported Sophie to be awake and comfortable, so the gentleman climbed up-stairs and shuffled into her peaceful, rose-colored room to give her a morning kiss.  The Lord’s Prayer glowed forth as brightly from the wall as if it had been pronounced for the first time that day.

“Well, heard all about my new pupil from Cornelia, I suppose?” said papa, when the kiss had been given, sitting down by the bedside, and holding his daughter’s pale, slender hand in his own.

“He who came last evening?  No, I’ve not seen Neelie to speak to her, since he was here.  What is he to be taught?”

“Wants to be a minister,” replied the professor, rubbing his beard.  “Shall do what I can for him, because he’s the son of a former friend, now dead.  I’m afraid he won’t do, though.  Needs a good deal besides Hebrew and history.”

“But you can give him all he does need, papa,” rejoined Sophie, with serene faith in the old gentleman’s infallibility.

“I don’t know,” returned he, his eyes resting upon the Lord’s Prayer.  “I don’t know,” he repeated, turning them to his daughter’s transparent face, which seemed almost an incarnation of the divine words.  “I think, my dear, that you could put some ideas into his head that would do him more good than any thing I can give him;” and he smiled gravely upon her.

“All right, papa,” said Sophie, gayly, with a tender kindling of her soft, gray eyes.  “Nothing could make me happier than to do good to somebody.  As soon as I get well enough, I’ll take him under my charge.”

Her manner was playful, but there was a vibration in her tone which caught the professor’s ear, and conveyed to him the idea that there was an unseen depth of yearning and passionate desire to be something more than an invalid, selfish and helpless, during her earthly life; an inheritance, perhaps, of the apostolic spirit which had played a not inconsiderable part in the history of his own life.  And surely, he may have thought, there never was human being better qualified than she to inspire to high and pure simplicity of life and thought, were it merely by the example of her own.  And would it not be a strange and beautiful thing, if this beloved daughter of his should be the means of turning to worthier and truer ambitions a man whom, of all others, he had reason to wish honored and respected among mankind!  It was a very alluring thought, and the professor quite lost himself for a few moments in the contemplation of it.  He did not reflect, and Sophie could not know, that there might be danger in the prosecution of such a scheme; for, all the knowledge which a young girl like her can have or impart, must find its ultimate origin