But he resolved to return to America at the earliest possible date and resume his efforts to find her.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE GOAL REACHED.
The winter passed, the summer came again, and on a sunny day in June the great chapel of the Normal College of New York city was packed with human beings to its utmost capacity.
Upon the broad platform were seated the professors, the tutors, and guests, while the body of the vast hall was filled with its fifteen hundred students, attentive and vigilant like so many soldiers at their posts.
These were girls all the way from fourteen to twenty years of age; girls of every shade of complexion and degree of beauty, or the reverse; bright maidens with latent mischief twinkling in their eyes, of every variety of color and shade; lasses of mercurial temperament, such as keep a household in a state of excitement and tumult, brimming with animal spirits and kittenish pranks. Others there were, however, with quiet serenity and dignity of manner, having sweet, clear-cut faces, and gentle ways shining through their countenances; and those, too—let us whisper it—with a suspicion of the vixen and virago; prudes and tomboys, angels and shrews—all mixed indiscriminately in that immense place, gathered for the final act of the school year—the graduating exercises, the distributing of the diplomas, and the departure of the senior class from the halls of learning out into the great world, there to take up their duties as teachers.
Among the large number of this class who occupy, on this occasion, the front seats in the chapel, there is one quiet figure, having a pale, delicate face, large, deep blue eyes, and a fair, gleaming brow, shaded by hair of brightest gold, which more than one of the numerous visitors have singled out from her sister graduates, on account of her peculiar loveliness and an indefinite something which seems to appeal to them from the depths of her lovely but rather sorrowful eyes.
Slight of form, unassuming in manner, but with a dainty, star-like beauty that was almost magnetic in its influence, she sat quietly in her seat until one of the professors announced the “Address in French,” as per programme, when she arose, and Miss Star Gladstone at once stepped upon the platform, saluting first the officers, teachers, and guests, then her fellow-students, with a charming little bow and a graceful inclination of her body.
In clear, bell-like tones she began her address, without the slightest appearance of self-consciousness or embarrassment, rolling out sentence after sentence in the smoothest and purest of French, until those who were well versed in the language wondered at such proficiency in one so young, while those who could not understand it were spell-bound by her exquisite voice and graceful gestures.
Star had been well taught in French before coming to this country, until it had become almost like her native tongue; therefore, after a year of arduous study under the best of teachers at the Normal College, it is not strange that she should have been chosen, on account of her purity of accent, to deliver the French oration.
“Who is she?” questioned one of the visitors of a teacher.