From the beginning there was an indefinable underlying something permeating this sweet-faced girl that had come to her from out of the wilderness--a something that sorely puzzled the good Miss Worth. It was like a single elusive carbon spot hidden away in the core of an otherwise perfect diamond--a spot that reflected through the eyes in fleeting transitory glints--a mote-flash that could not be located--baffling discernment only under powerful, expert analysis. Miss Worth loved the girl. She loved her straightway from the minute that she had held her small, shapely hand, and listened to the timbre of that shy, dulcet voice. She had never seen eyes tinted like these. She marvelled at her curls. Her perfect delicate, Grecian features filled Miss Worth with a lasting wonder. Through the Reverend Peterson she heard the tragic history of the girl's comely mother, but she could not conceive a heredity sufficiently generous to give the beauty made adorably manifest in this girl of the hills. In every movement her natural artless grace was as a rhythm of poetry. Miss Worth then recognized an extraordinary character--the fibre of a beautiful, wonderful, lovable womanhood--a girl who could, with the embellishments of education and adornments of fashion, go into the sphere of any secular circle of society in any municipality and create a furore. She was quick to foresee an interesting future for her new protegee, if she could only discover the elusive defect that she could not name, but which was palpably present to her keen senses, versed in thought reading and the pathology of organic character ailments. Very many times, as the days slipped by, she observed flashes of that sober, mystifying light in Belle-Ann's eyes--a sudden quick, almost vindictive dropping of the sweet lips that showed, otherwise, a dimpled upturn. It followed that Miss Worth devoted extra care to Belle-Ann's tutorage--all the while bent upon deftly angling for that alien, shifting thing that a casual observer would have passed unnoticed. The second Sunday following Belle-Ann's arrival at the school, Miss Worth presented to her an elderly gentleman of distinguished mien and marked personality, and of whom the girl was destined to see much thereafter. This engaging personage was Colonel Amos Tennytown, who resided down Blue-Grass way, and who visited the school, sometimes during the week, but most generally on a Sunday. Belle-Ann ever remembered her first meeting with this man, whose deferential manner was rich with little original courtesies which were innate manifestations of gentility that were born with the man. And his voice, in particular, carried a charm that was soothing and totally irresistible.