"I hardly think you'll care to repeat the experiment again," Arthur said to Edith next morning, when he met her at the table, and saw that she looked rather weary. "Nina, I fear, was troublesome, as Sophy tells me she often is." Edith denied Nina's having troubled her much. Still she felt that she preferred her own cozy bed-chamber to Nina's larger, handsomer room, and would not promise to spend another night at Grassy Spring, although she expressed her willingness to resume her drawing lessons, and suggested that Nina, too, should become a pupil. Arthur would much rather have had Edith all to himself, for he knew that Nina's presence would be a restraint upon him, but it was right, and he consented as the only means of having Edith back again in her old place, fancying that when he had her there it would be the same as before. But he was mistaken, for when the lessons were resumed, he found there was something between them,-- something which absorbed Edith's mind, and was to him a constant warning and rebuke. Did he bend so near Edith at her task, that his brown locks touched her blacker braids, a shower of golden curls was sure to mingle with the twain, as Nina also bent her down to see what he was looking at. Did the hand which sometimes guided Edith's pencil ever retain the fingers longer than necessary, a pair of deep blue eyes looked into his, not reproachfully, for Nina could not fathom the meaning of what she saw, but with an expression of childlike trust and confidence far more potent than frowns and jealous tears would have been. Nina was in Arthur's way, but not in Edith's, and half the pleasure she experienced now in going to Grassy Spring, was derived from the fact that she thus saw more of Nina than she would otherwise have done. It was a rare and beautiful sight, the perfect love existing between these two young girls, Edith seeming the elder, inasmuch as she was the taller and more self-reliant of the two. As a mother watches over and loves her maimed infant, so did Edith guard and cherish Nina, possessing over her so much power that a single look from her black eyes was sufficient to quiet at once the little lady, who, under the daily influence of her society visibly improved both in health and spirits. CHAPTER XVIII. DR. GRISWOLD.