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They were soon after marshalled to the supper-room. Elsie slipped in among the others, but was so stately and demure, and with her curls brushed down so straight that you would scarcely have known her. Her father caught his pet around the waist, and was about to introduce her, when George hastened to say with the solemnity of an undertaker that Elsie and Mr. Stanhope had met before.

Elsie repented the promise she had wrung from her brother, for any amount of badinage would be better than this depressing formality. She took her seat, not daring to look at the obnoxious guest; and the family noticed with surprise that they had never seen the little maiden so quenched and abashed before. But George good- naturedly tried to make the conversation general, so as to give them time to recover themselves.

Elsie soon ventured to steal shy looks at Mr. Stanhope, and with her usual quickness discovered that he was more in terror of her than she of him, and she exulted in the fact.

“I’ll punish him well, if I get a chance,” she thought with a certain phase of the feminine sense of justice. But the sadness of his face quite disarmed her when her mother, in well-meant kindness, asked:

“Where is your home located, Mr. Stanhope?”

“In the seminary,” he answered in rather a low tone.

“You don’t mean to say that you have no better one than a forlorn cell in Dogma Hall?” exclaimed George, earnestly.

Mr. Stanhope crimsoned, and then grew pale, but tried to say lightly, “An orphan of my size and years is not a very moving object of sympathy; but one might well find it difficult not to break the Tenth Commandment while seeing how you are surrounded.”

Elsie was vexed at her disposition to relent toward him; she so hardened her face, however, that James rallied her:

“Why, Puss, what is the matter? Yours is the most unpromising Thanksgiving phiz I have seen today. ‘Count your marcies.'”

Elsie blushed so violently, and Mr. Stanhope looked so distressed that James finished his supper in puzzled silence, thinking, however, “What has come over the little witch? For a wonder, she seems to have met a man that she is afraid of: but the joke is, he seems even more afraid of her.”

In the social parlor some of the stiffness wore off; but Elsie and Mr. Stanhope kept on opposite sides of the room and had very little to say to each other. Motherly Mrs. Alford drew the young man out sufficiently, however, to become deeply interested in him.

By the next morning time for thought had led him to feel that he must trespass on their hospitality no longer. Moreover, he plainly recognized that his presence was an oppression and restraint upon Elsie; and he was very sorry that he had stayed at all. But when he made known his purpose the family would not listen to it.

“I should feel dreadfully hurt if you left us now,” said Mrs. Alford, so decidedly that he was in a dilemma, and stole a timid look toward Elsie, who at once guessed his motive in going away. Her kind heart got the better of her; and her face relented in a sudden reassuring smile. Then she turned hastily away. Only George saw and understood the little side scene and the reason Mr. Stanhope was induced to remain. Then Elsie, in her quickly varying moods, was vexed at herself, and became more cold and distant than ever. “He will regard me as only a pert, forward miss, but I will teach him better,” she thought; and she astonished the family more and more by a stateliness utterly unlike herself. Mr. Stanhope sincerely regretted that he had not broken away, in spite of the others; but in order not to seem vacillating he resolved to stay till the following morning, even though he departed burdened with the thought that he had spoiled the day for one of the family. Things had now gone so far that leaving might only lead to explanations and more general annoyances, for George had intimated that the little mistake of the previous evening should remain a secret.