CHAPTER VIII.
GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS The world is weary of new tracks of thought That lead to nought-- Sick of quack remedies prescribed in vain For mortal pain, Yet still above them all one Figure stands With outstretched Hands.
"Cousin Maria, do you like Alan Tremaine ?" asked Elisabeth, not long after her return from Yorkshire.
"Like him, my dear?
I neither like nor dislike persons with whom I have as little in common as I have with Mr.Tremaine.But he strikes me as a young man of parts, and his manners are admirable." "I wasn't thinking about his manners, I was thinking about his views," said the girl, walking across the room and looking through the window at the valley smiling in the light of the summer morning; "don't you think they are very broad and enlightened ?" "I daresay they are.

Young persons of superior intelligence are frequently dazzled by their own brilliance at first, and consider that they were sent into the world specially to confute the law and the prophets.

As they grow older they learn better." Elisabeth began playing with the blind-cord.

"I think he is awfully clever," she remarked.
"My dear, how often must I beg you not to use that word _awfully_, except in its correct sense?
Remember that we hold the English tongue in trust--it belongs to the nation and not to us--and we have no more right to profane England's language by the introduction of coined words and slang expressions than we have to disendow her institutions or to pollute her rivers." "All right; I'll try not to forget again.

But you really do think Alan is clever, don't you ?" "He is undoubtedly intelligent, and possesses the knack of appearing even more intelligent than he is; but at present he has not learned his own limitations." "You mean that he isn't clever enough to know that he isn't cleverer," suggested Elisabeth.
"Well, my dear, I should never have put it in that way, but that approximately expresses my ideas about our young friend." "And he is aw--I mean frightfully well off." Miss Farringdon looked sternly at the speaker.