wives. Many men had loved, or had seemed to love, Susan during these years. She had been somewhat moved two or three times by their passion and devotion; but she had never really loved. It began to look as if she were obdurate of nature, in spite of all her warm-heartedness. Sometimes a fear came into Bell's mind that her old relation with Edward Balloure still stood between Susan and all other men; and when she saw the professor at his post again, handsome, brilliant, fascinating, as ever, devoted as ever, plausible as ever, in his assumption of the rôle of a privileged mentor, Bell Lawton groaned and said within herself, "How is such a man as this ever to be circumvented?" A sort of hate grew up in her heart toward him. Edward Balloure recognized it; he had the keenest of instincts, and knew on the instant the woman who trusted and admired him from the woman who unconsciously shrank away when he approached her. But he only laughed cynically when he saw poor Bell's desperate efforts to be civil to him, and said in his cold-blooded heart:—
"She 's much mistaken, if she thinks she can come between Susan and me."
Bell had too much good sense to try. Beyond an occasional half laughing or satirical reference to Professor Balloure's devotion, she avoided the subject. She made no attempt to exclude him from the house. On the contrary, she endeavored to make it evident to the whole world that he was one of
