before her, and offered each a different opinion on any given subject, I
have scarcely a doubt as to whose would have commended itself to her
as combining the soundest practical wisdom and the highest Christian
benevolence.

So the summer passed on, and her shyness wore off,--and their intimacy
became less and less that of teacher and pupil, and more and more that
of friend and friend. With the sudden awakening of her intellectual
nature, there woke also another power, of whose existence she had never
dreamed. It was natural, that, in ranging the fields of thought so
lately opened to her, she should often revert to him whose hand had
unbarred the gates; she was therefore not startled that the image of
Felix Clerron was with her when she sat down and when she rose up, when
she went out and when she came in. She ceased, indeed, to think _of_
him. She thought _him_. She lived him. Her soul fed on his life. And
so--and so--by a pleasant and flowery path, there came into Ivy's heart
the old, old pain.

Now the thing was on this wise:--

One morning, when she went to recite, she did not find Mr. Clerron in
the library, where he usually awaited her. After spending a few moments
in looking over her lessons, she rose and was about to pass to the door
to ring, when Mrs. Simm looked in, and, seeing Ivy, informed her
that Mr. Clerron was in the garden, and desired her to come out. Ivy
immediately followed Mrs. Simm into the garden. On the south side of the
house was a piazza two stories high. Along the pillars which supported
it a trellis-work had been constructed, reaching several feet above the
roof of the piazza. About this climbed a vigorous grape-vine, which not
only completely screened nearly the whole front of the piazza, but,