There was little change the next day, until all at once she said in a clear voice that she should like to see her master at the school, Mr. Langdon.  He came accordingly, and took the place of Helen at her bedside.  It seemed as if Elsie had forgotten the last scene with him.  Might it be that pride had come in, and she had sent for him only to show how superior she had grown to the weakness which had betrayed her into that extraordinary request, so contrary to the instincts and usages of her sex?  Or was it that the singular change which had come over her had involved her passionate fancy for him and swept it away with her other habits of thought and feeling?  Or could it be that she felt that all earthly interests were becoming of little account to her, and wished to place herself right with one to whom she had displayed a wayward movement of her unbalanced imagination?  She welcomed Mr. Bernard as quietly as she had received Helen Darley.  He colored at the recollection of that last scene, when he came into her presence; but she smiled with perfect tranquillity.  She did not speak to him of any apprehension; but he saw that she looked upon herself as doomed.  So friendly, yet so calm did she seem through all their interview, that Mr. Bernard could only look back upon her manifestation of feeling towards him on their walk from the school as a vagary of a mind laboring under some unnatural excitement, and wholly at variance with the true character of Elsie Venner as he saw her before him in her subdued, yet singular beauty.  He looked with almost scientific closeness of observation into the diamond eyes; but that peculiar light which he knew so well was not there.  She was the same in one sense as on that first day when he had seen her coiling and uncoiling her golden chain; yet how different in every aspect which revealed her state of mind and emotion!  Something of tenderness there was, perhaps, in her tone towards him; she would not have sent for him, had she not felt more than an ordinary interest in him.  But through the whole of his visit she never lost her gracious self-possession.  The Dudley race might well be proud of the last of its daughters, as she lay dying, but unconquered by the feeling of the present or the fear of the future.

As for Mr. Bernard, he found it very hard to look upon her, and listen to her unmoved.  There was nothing that reminded him of the stormy—­browed, almost savage girl he remembered in her fierce loveliness,—­nothing of all her singularities of air and of costume.  Nothing?  Yes, one thing.  Weak and suffering as she was, she had never parted with one particular ornament, such as a sick person would naturally, as it might be supposed, get rid of at once.  The golden cord which she wore round her neck at the great party was still there.  A bracelet was lying by her pillow; she had unclasped it from her wrist.

Before Mr. Bernard left her, she said,

“I shall never see you again.  Some time or other, perhaps, you will mention my name to one whom you love.  Give her this from your scholar and friend Elsie.”