“Look here, Cynthia; you know what I am going for.  It’s all right, I feel sure, for I have had private means of finding out.  It’s a sure thing; but I must go once more to see that the other fellows don’t try any trick on us.  You understand what is for my advantage is for yours, and, if I go wrong, you go overboard with me.  Now I must leave the—­you know—­behind me.  I can’t leave it in the house or the office:  they might burn up.  I won’t have it about me when I am travelling.  Draw your chair a little more this way.  Now listen.”

["Indade I will,” said the third party to herself.  The reader will find out in due time whether she listened to any purpose or not.]

In the mean time Myrtle, who for some reason was rather nervous and restless, had found a pair of half-finished slippers which she had left behind her.  The color came into her cheeks when she remembered the state of mind she was in when she was working on them for the Rev. Mr. Stoker.  She recollected Master Gridley’s mistake about their destination, and determined to follow the hint he had given.  It would please him better if she sent them to good Father Pemberton, she felt sure, than if he should get them himself.  So she enlarged them somewhat, (for the old man did not pinch his feet, as the younger clergyman was in the habit of doing, and was, besides, of portly dimensions, as the old orthodox three-deckers were apt to be,) and worked E. P. very handsomely into the pattern, and sent them to him with her love and respect, to his great delight; for old ministers do not have quite so many tokens of affection from fair hands as younger ones.

What made Myrtle nervous and restless?  Why had she quitted the city so abruptly, and fled to her old home, leaving all the gayeties behind her which had so attracted and dazzled her?

She had not betrayed herself at the third meeting with the young man who stood in such an extraordinary relation to her,—­who had actually given her life from his own breath,—­as when she met him for the second time.  Whether his introduction to her at the party, just at the instant when Murray Bradshaw was about to make a declaration, saved her from being in another moment the promised bride of that young gentleman, or not, we will not be so rash as to say.  It looked, certainly, as if he was in a fair way to carry his point; but perhaps she would have hesitated, or shrunk back, when the great question came to stare her in the face.

She was excited, at any rate, by the conversation, so that, when Clement was presented to her, her thoughts could not at once be all called away from her other admirer, and she was saved from all danger of that sudden disturbance which had followed their second meeting.  Whatever impression he made upon her developed itself gradually,—­still, she felt strangely drawn towards him.  It was not simply in his good looks, in his good manners, in his conversation,