Mr. Richard began to think of reopening his second parallel.  But he had lost something of the coolness with which he had begun his system of operations.  The more he had reflected upon the matter, the more he had convinced himself that this was his one great chance in life.  If he suffered this girl to escape him, such an opportunity could hardly, in the nature of things, present itself a second time.  Only one life between Elsie and her fortune,—­and lives are so uncertain!  The girl might not suit him as a wife.  Possibly.  Time enough to find out after he had got her.  In short, he must have the property, and Elsie Venner, as she was to go with it,—­and then, if he found it convenient and agreeable to, lead a virtuous life, he would settle down and raise children and vegetables; but if he found it inconvenient and disagreeable, so much the worse for those who made it so.  Like many other persons, he was not principled against virtue, provided virtue were a better investment than its opposite; but he knew that there might be contingencies in which the property would be better without its incumbrances, and he contemplated this conceivable problem in the light of all its possible solutions.

One thing Mr. Richard could not conceal from himself:  Elsie had some new cause of indifference, at least, if not of aversion to him.  With the acuteness which persons who make a sole business of their own interest gain by practice, so that fortune-hunters are often shrewd where real lovers are terribly simple, he fixed at once on the young man up at the school where the girl had been going of late, as probably at the bottom of it.

“Cousin Elsie in love!” so he communed with himself upon his lonely pillow.  “In love with a Yankee schoolmaster!  What else can it be?  Let him look out for himself!  He’ll stand but a bad chance between us.  What makes you think she’s in love with him?  Met her walking with him.  Don’t like her looks and ways;—­she’s thinking about something, anyhow.  Where does she get those books she is reading so often?  Not out of our library, that ‘s certain.  If I could have ten minutes’ peep into her chamber now, I would find out where she got them, and what mischief she was up to.”

At that instant, as if some tributary demon had heard his wish, a shape which could be none but Elsie’s flitted through a gleam of moonlight into the shadow of the trees.  She was setting out on one of her midnight rambles.

Dick felt his heart stir in its place, and presently his cheeks flushed with the old longing for an adventure.  It was not much to invade a young girl’s deserted chamber, but it would amuse a wakeful hour, and tell him some little matters he wanted to know.  The chamber he slept in was over the room which Elsie chiefly occupied at this season.  There was no great risk of his being seen or heard, if he ventured down-stairs to her apartment.

Mr. Richard Venner, in the pursuit of his interesting project, arose and lighted a lamp.  He wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and thrust his feet into a pair of cloth slippers.  He stole carefully down the stair, and arrived safely at the door of Elsie’s room.