Paula from her stand at the door—for some minutes she had been endeavoring to escape to her room—surveyed her cousin in wonder. She had never seen her look as she did at that moment. Any one who speaks from the heart, acquires a certain eloquence, and Ona for once was speaking from her heart. The unwonted emotion made her cheeks burn, and even her diamonds, ten thousand dollars worth as we have heard declared, were less brilliant than her eyes. Paula left her station on the door-sill and glided rapidly back to her side. “O Ona,” said she, “if you would only look like that when—” she paused, what right had she to venture upon giving lessons to her benefactor. “When what?” inquired the other, subsiding at once into her naturally languid manner. Then with a total forgetfulness of the momentary curiosity that had prompted the question, held out her head to the attendant Sarah, with a command to be relieved of her ornaments. Paula sighed and hastened to her room. She could not bring herself to mention her anxiety in regard to the still absent master of the house, to this lazily-smiling thoroughly satisfied woman. But none the less did she herself sit up in the moonlight, listening with bended head for the sound of his step on the walk beneath. She could not sleep while he was absent; and yet the thoughts that disturbed her and kept her from her virgin pillow could not have been entirely for him, or why those wandering smiles that ever and anon passed flitting over her cheek, awakening the dimples that slumbered there, until she looked more like a dreamy picture of delight than a wakeful vision of apprehension. Not entirely for him—yet when somewhere towards three o’clock, she heard the long delayed step upon the stoop, she started up with eager eyes and a nervous gesture that sufficiently betrayed how intense was her interest in her benefactor’s welfare and happiness. “If he goes to Ona’s room it is all right,” thought she; “but if he keeps on upstairs, I shall know that something is wrong and that he needs a comforter.”