They took seats early in the hall, and had leisure to look about them. Philip bowed to acquaintances here and there. After a time he began to feel unpleasantly conscious of some spell fastening upon him--some other influence than his own will magnetizing his thoughts and movements, until he was compelled to look toward a remote part of the room, where, in the shadow of a pillar, he saw two burning eyes fixed upon him. The face was so much in the shade that he could not distinguish it for some time; but the eyes, glowing and steady as those of a rattlesnake, seemed to pierce him through and transfix him. He looked away, and tried to appear indifferent, yet his own eyes would keep wandering back to those singular and disagreeable ones. At last he made out the face: it was that of the young man who had brought him down from Wilde's mill the last autumn. What was Ben Perkins doing in such a place as this? He began to feel certain who the mysterious pupil was. "She has thought to please and surprise me," he mused; "yet I believe I would rather she would have kept herself just as unsophisticated as she was, until she learned the world under _my_ tutelage." Young ladies came on to the stage, there was music and reading--but Philip was deaf, for _she_ was not amid the graceful throng. At last she came. His own timid wild-flower, his fawn of the forest, stole out into the presence of all those eyes. A murmur of admiration could be heard throughout the hall. She blushed, yet she was self-possessed. Philip gazed at her in astonishment. Her dress, of the richest blue silk, the flowers on her breast and in her hair, the bow, the step, the little personal adornments, were all _a la mode_. His woodland sylph had been transformed into a modern young lady. He was almost displeased--and yet she was so supremely fair, such a queen amid the others, that she looked more lovely than ever. He wondered if everybody had been teaching her how beautiful she was. There was nothing of coquetry or vanity in her looks--but a pride, cold and starry, which was entirely new to her. He turned to look at Ben Perkins, who had leaned forward into the light so that his face was plainly visible; and the suspicions he had often entertained that the youth loved Alice were confirmed by his expression at that moment. "Poor boy! how can he help it?" thought the proud and happy gentleman, regarding the untaught lumberman with a kind of generous compassion. He now saw that Mr. Wilde was sitting by Ben's side, his heart and eyes also fixed upon the stage.