CHAPTER XII.
"Love, like a June rose, Buds and sweetly blows-- But tears its leaves disclose, And among thorns it grows." The professor had been standing inside the curtain for a full minute before Perpetua had seen him.

Spell-bound he had stood there, gazing at the girl as if bewitched.

Up to this he had seen her only in black--black always--severe, cold--but _now!_ It is to him as though he had seen her for the first time.

The graceful curves of her neck, her snowy arms, the dead white of the gown against the whiter glory of the soft bosom, the large, dark eyes so full of feeling, the little dainty head! Are they _all_ new--or some sweet, fresher memory of a picture well beloved?
Then he had seen his brother!--Hastings--the disgrace, the _rou饑-- and bending over _her!..._ There had been that little movement, and the girl's calm drawing back, and---- The professor's step forward at that moment had betrayed him to Perpetua.
She rises now, letting her fan fall without thought to the ground.
"You!" cries she, in a little, soft, quick way.

_"You!"_ Indeed it seems to her impossible that it can be he.
She almost runs to him.