Hemstead went to his room with steps that deep thought rendered slower and slower. He forgot his weariness, and sat down before the fire to think of one known but a few brief hours. If there are those who can coolly predict "awful things" of the faithless and godless, Hemstead was not one of them. The young girl who thought him a good subject for jest and ridicule, he regarded with profound pity. Her utter unconsciousness of danger had to him the elements of deepest pathos. While perplexed by contradictions in her manner and words, he concluded that she was what she seemed, a girl of unusual force of mind, frank and kindly, and full of noble impulses, but whose religious nature was but slightly developed. He at that time would have been shocked and indignant if he had known the truth. Her natural tendencies had been good. Her positive nature would never waver weakly along the uncertain boundary of good and evil, as was the case with Bel Parton. She was one who would be decided and progressive in one direction or the other, but now was clearly on the sinister side of truth and moral loveliness. Surrounding influences had been adverse. She had yielded to them, and they had carried her farther astray than if she had been of a cautious and less forceful temperament. While therefore full of good impulses, she was also passionate and selfish. Much homage had made her imperious, exacting, and had developed no small degree of vanity. She exulted in the power and pre-eminence that beauty gave, and often exerted the former cruelly, though it is due to her to state that she did not realize the pain she caused. While her own heart slept, she could not understand the aching disquiet of others that she toyed with. That it was good sport, high-spiced excitement, and occupation for her restless, active mind, was all she considered. As she would never be neutral in her moral character, so she was one who would do much of either harm or good. Familiarity with the insincerities of fashionable life had blurred her sense of truthfulness in little things, and in matters of policy she could hide her meaning or express another as well as her veteran mother. And yet there were great possibilities of good in her character. She had a substratum of sound common sense; was wholesomely averse to meanness, cowardice, and temporizing; best of all, she was not shallow and weak. She could appreciate noble action, and her mind could kindle at great thoughts if presented clearly and strongly. She could scarcely be blamed severely for being what she was, for she had only responded to the influences that had ever surrounded her, and been moulded by them. Her character was rapidly forming, but not as yet fixed. Therefore her best chance of escaping a moral deformity as marked as her external beauty was the coming under an entirely different class of influences.