Hemstead admitted Harcourt and the young ladies into the shadowy hall, and then bade them good night. He, too, was in no mood for Addie's gossip or Bel's satire. They had also found Harcourt strangely silent and pre-occupied. The evident influence of Miss Martell over Harcourt, and their intimate relations require some explanation. He was an orphan, and his father had been a friend of Mr. Martell. During the last illness of the elder Mr. Harcourt, he had asked his friend to take some interest in his son, and, when possible, to give him friendly counsel. To a man like Mr. Martell such a request was like a sacred obligation; and he had sought to do more than was asked. He wrote the young man almost fatherly letters, and often invited him to his house. Thus it came about that the influence of Mr. Martell and his daughter did more to restrain the wayward tendencies of young Harcourt than all other things combined; and it must be confessed that the little blue-eyed girl had more influence than the wise old father. She seemed to take almost a sisterly interest in him, and occasionally wrote such a sweet little letter that he would reform his college life for a week thereafter. But he seemed to have a dash of wild blood that would break out only too often into indiscretions, the rumors of which filled his kind friend Mr. Martell with anxiety. But Alice, his daughter ever insisted that he would "come out all right." "Tom has a good heart, father," she would say; and so, with woman's faith, she hoped where her father feared. If Harcourt could have been continually under their influence he would undoubtedly have developed into a far better man. But, between absence at college and the law-school and some travel during vacations, he saw less and less of them. Alice also was kept very steadily at school, and during the last two years of her studies they had missed each other in vacations, and seldom met. But something more than maidenly modesty and pride made Alice shy and reserved when with Harcourt. She would think more about him, but talk less to him than to others when in company. She was a peculiarly sensitive, diffident girl, and instinctively shrank from the man who had for her the strongest interest.