So he began talking with her in an easy way; for he knew something of young girls by this time, and, of course, could adapt himself to a young lady who looked as if she might be not more than fifteen or sixteen years old, and therefore could hardly be a match in intellectual resources for the seventeen and eighteen year-old first-class scholars of the Apollinean Institute.  But city-wall-fruit ripens early, and he soon found that this girl’s training had so sharpened her wits and stored her memory, that he need not be at the trouble to stoop painfully in order to come down to her level.

The beauty of good-breeding is that it adjusts itself to all relations without effort, true to itself always however the manners of those around it may change.  Self-respect and respect for others,—­the sensitive consciousness poises itself in these as the compass in the ship’s binnacle balances itself and maintains its true level within the two concentric rings which suspend it on their pivots.  This thorough-bred school-girl quite enchanted Mr. Bernard.  He could not understand where she got her style, her way of dress, her enunciation, her easy manners.  The minister was a most worthy gentleman, but this was not the Rockland native-born manner; some new element had come in between the good, plain, worthy man and this young girl, fit to be a Crown Prince’s partner where there were a thousand to choose from.

He looked across to Helen Darley, for he knew she would understand the glance of admiration with which he called her attention to the young beauty at his side; and Helen knew what a young girl could be, as compared with what too many a one is, as well as anybody.

This poor, dear Helen of ours!  How admirable the contrast between her and the Widow on the other side of Dudley Venner!  But, what was very odd, that gentleman apparently thought the contrast was to the advantage of this poor, dear Helen.  At any rate, instead of devoting himself solely to the Widow, he happened to be just at that moment talking in a very interested and, apparently, not uninteresting way to his right-hand neighbor, who, on her part, never looked more charmingly,—­as Mr. Bernard could not help saying to himself,—­but, to be sure, he had just been looking at the young girl next him, so that his eyes were brimful of beauty, and may have spilled some of it on the first comer:  for you know M. Becquerel has been showing us lately how everything is phosphorescent; that it soaks itself with light in an instant’s exposure, so that it is wet with liquid sunbeams, or, if you will, tremulous with luminous vibrations, when first plunged into the negative bath of darkness, and betrays itself by the light which escapes from its surface.