Mr. Bernard saw this influence coming over her.  All at once he noticed that she sighed, and that some little points of moisture began to glisten on her forehead.  But she did not grow pale perceptibly; she had no involuntary or hysteric movements; she still listened to him and smiled naturally enough.  Perhaps she was only nervous at being stared at.  At any rate, she was coming under some unpleasant influence or other, and Mr. Bernard had seen enough of the strange impression Elsie sometimes produced to wish this young girl to be relieved from it, whatever it was.  He turned toward Elsie and looked at her in such a way as to draw her eyes upon him.  Then he looked steadily and calmly into them.  It was a great effort, for some perfectly inexplicable reason.  At one instant he thought he could not sit where he was; he must go and speak to Elsie.  Then he wanted to take his eyes away from hers; there was something intolerable in the light that came from them.  But he was determined to look her down, and he believed he could do it, for he had seen her countenance change more than once when he had caught her gaze steadily fixed on him.  All this took not minutes, but seconds.  Presently she changed color slightly,—­lifted her head, which was inclined a little to one side,—­shut and opened her eyes two or three times, as if they had been pained or wearied,—­and turned away baffled, and shamed, as it would seem, and shorn for the time of her singular and formidable or at least evil-natured power of swaying the impulses of those around her.

It takes too long to describe these scenes where a good deal of life is concentrated into a few silent seconds.  Mr. Richard Veneer had sat quietly through it all, although this short pantomime had taken place literally before his face.  He saw what was going on well enough, and understood it all perfectly well.  Of course the schoolmaster had been trying to make Elsie jealous, and had succeeded.  The little schoolgirl was a decoy-duck,—­that was all.  Estates like the Dudley property were not to be had every day, and no doubt the Yankee usher was willing to take some pains to make sure of Elsie.  Does n’t Elsie look savage?  Dick involuntarily moved his chair a little away from her, and thought he felt a pricking in the small white scars on his wrist.  A dare-devil fellow, but somehow or other this girl had taken strange hold of his imagination, and he often swore to himself, that, when he married her, he would carry a loaded revolver with him to his bridal chamber.

Mrs. Blanche Creamer raged inwardly at first to find herself between the two old gentlemen of the party.  It very soon gave her great comfort, however, to see that Marilla, Rowens had just missed it in her calculations, and she chuckled immensely to find Dudley Veneer devoting himself chiefly to Helen Darley.  If the Rowens woman should hook Dudley, she felt as if she should gnaw all her nails off for spite.