Turning quickly away, he left the room, before she could even catch a glimpse of his countenance.
The strong and lasting affection that sprang up between instructor and pupil--the sense of dependence on each other's society--rarely occurs among persons in whose ages so great a disparity exists. Spring and autumn have no affinities--age has generally no sympathy for the gushing sprightliness, the eager questioning, the rose-hued dreams and aspirations of young people; and youth shrinks chilled and constrained from the austere companionship of those who, with snowy locks gilded by the fading rays of a setting sun, totter down the hill of life, journeying to the dark and silent valley of the shadow of death.
Preferring Mr. Hammond's society to that of the comparative strangers who visited Mrs. Murray, Edna spent half of her time at the quiet parsonage, and the remainder with her books and music. That under auspices so favorable her progress was almost unprecedentedly rapid, furnished matter of surprise to no one who was capable of estimating the results of native genius and vigorous application. Mrs. Murray watched the expansion of her mind, and the development of her beauty, with emotions of pride and pleasure, which, had she analyzed them, would have told her how dear and necessary to her happiness the orphan had become.
As Edna's reasoning powers strengthened, Mr. Hammond led her gradually to the contemplation of some of the gravest problems that have from time immemorial perplexed and maddened humanity, plunging one half into blind, bigoted traditionalism, and scourging the other into the dreary sombre, starless wastes of Pyrrhonism. Knowing full well that of every earnest soul and honest, profound thinker these ontologic questions would sooner or later demand audience, he wisely placed her in the philosophic palaestra, encouraged her wrestlings, cheered her on, handed her from time to time the instruments and aids she needed, and then, when satisfied that the intellectual gymnastics had properly trained and developed her, he invited her-- where he felt assured the spirit of the age would inevitably drive her--to the great Pythian games of speculation, where the lordly intellects of the nineteenth century gather to test their ratiocinative skill, and bear off the crown of bay on the point of a syllogism or the wings of an audacious hypothesis.
Thus immersed in study, weeks, months, and years glided by, bearing her young life swiftly across the Enna meads of girlhood, nearer and nearer to the portals of that mystic temple of womanhood, on whose fair fretted shrine was to be offered a heart either consumed by the baleful fires of Baal, or purified and consecrated by the Shekinah, promised through Messiah.