Miss Druett said these words aloud. Miss Priscilla glanced sharply at her, but apparently saw nothing to rouse her suspicions, and the evening passed away as usual. CHAPTER SEVENTH. MISS MEEKS. CALISTA waked early the next morning, and lay a long time thinking over what had happened the day before. She shuddered at the narrowness of her escape. "Oh, how differently I should be feeling if I had taken that money! It was mother who saved me," she said to herself. And then a sensation of awe came over her as she asked herself the question, "But who was it that sent the remembrance of mother at the critical moment? Did he really care? Did he save me—me, who never did or tried to do one thing for him in all my life? Can it be that Mary is right, and that he really loves 'me?'" Calista rose, dressed herself, and sat down in her accustomed place in the deep window. She revolved many things in her mind. She went back over her past life, and considered her present situation. She looked herself fairly in the face, so to speak, and she did not find a great deal in the view to flatter her vanity. It was true, as Mary had hinted: she was in danger of thinking as much of money as Aunt Priscilla herself. Looking back over the past few weeks, she was astonished to see how much of her time and thoughts had been bestowed on that subject alone. Walking by the way, alone in her own room, in the school-room when her book was before her and her mind should have been on its pages—even in the house of God itself—her one subject of contemplation had been money, or what money would buy; what she would do when Aunt Priscilla was out of the way, and the Stanfield place should be her own; and latterly, how she would find her grandfather's will; how she would confront Aunt Priscilla, and humble her in the dust; how she would take possession of the old mansion, and put it in perfect repair; these had been her dreams day and night. These had led her into temptation—had almost brought her to the commission of an act at the thought of which she still turned cold and sick. "I am resolved I will do so no more," she said to herself, decidedly and almost aloud. "I will give my whole mind to my lessons, and so prepare myself to make my own way in the world. I will try to be civil to Aunt Priscilla, and not provoke her; but whatever I do, I won't be thinking of nothing but money all the time, I am determined upon that. She can't live forever, that is certain, and—" And then Calista, pulled herself up short, vexed and ashamed to find her thoughts, even in the very moment of her resolution, going off into their old channels. She would find, as many another has found, that resolutions made in mere human strength are, as opposed to the force of inbred and indulged sin, as a rope of sand to a mountain torrent.