One phase alone in her development had puzzled and baffled him. She had gone off one spring to a country neighborhood in another State, where she had some old relatives on her mother's side. Mr. Leigh had been called to Europe on business, and she had remained there until well into the summer. When she returned she was not the same. Some change had taken place in her. She had gone away a rollicking, gay, pleasure-loving, and rather selfish young girl--he was obliged to admit that she was both wilful and self-indulgent. Even his affection for her could not blind his eyes to this, and at times it had given him much concern, for at times there was a clash in which, if he came off victor, he felt it was at a perilous price--that, possibly, of a strain on her obedience. She returned a full-grown woman, thoughtful and self-sacrificing and with an aim--he was glad it was not a mission--and as her aim was to be useful, and she began with him, he accepted it with contentment. She talked freely of her visit; spoke warmly, and indeed, enthusiastically, of those she had met there. Among these were a young country preacher and a friend of his, a young Jew. But, though she spoke of both with respect, the praise she accorded them was so equal that he dismissed from his mind the possibility that she could have been seriously taken with either of them. Possibly, the Jew was the one she was most enthusiastic over, but she spoke of him too openly to cause her father disquietude. Besides, he was a Jew. The preacher she plainly respected most highly, yet her account of his appearance was too humorous to admit a serious feeling for him, even though she had gotten him called to be one of Dr. Capon's assistants. What had happened was that the girl, who had only "lain in the lilies and fed on the roses of life," had suddenly been dropped in an out-of-the-way corner in a country neighborhood in an old State, where there were neither lilies nor roses of the metaphorical kind, though a sufficiency of the real and natural kind, with which nature in compensatory mood atones to those who have of the metaphorical sort but thistles and brambles and flinty soil.