If Freeman Vance had not appeared on the scene the book would certainly have been laid aside; but how utterly foolish would her position appear to him! He would call her a prude, as she had heard him call a young lady who had been the subject of conversation the other day. She knew just how his lip curled when he said it. Not that she cared for Freeman Vance's opinion, she told herself; but, then, nobody liked to be talked about. As she reached this conclusion she turned another leaf. The interesting hero was in the midst of a statement given with as much energy as he ever used, and, by way of emphasizing his point, he used an unmitigated oath.
"Can you deliberately hold in your hand books of a kind which you know perfectly well lead you farther from instead of nearer to Him?"
The quotation came to the reader suddenly, with almost as much force as though it had been spoken by an audible voice. She made an instant's pause—the oath unread—and looked down at her fair hands. They were being soiled! There was no question in her heart about it. With a sudden, impulsive movement, she spread open her hands with a repellent gesture, as though she recoiled from the thing touched, and the book fell to the floor. Freeman Vance sprang to return it and Carrie gave a nervous start.
"Why, Elsie Burton, what is the matter? You made me drop six stitches off my hook."
"Is there a ghost on that page?" queried Ben, mischief in his voice.
"No," said Elsie, her courage and her color rising. "I think it is a serpent. Thank you, Mr. Vance; I don't want the thing again. I have had quite too much of it. You must all excuse me from farther reading of that book. I am not in sympathy with the morals or the manners of its characters. I am ashamed that I have allowed myself to read it so long."
"I'll venture that it is another case of 'soiled hands,'" Ben said, nothing but amusement in his voice.
His cousin turned toward him with flashing eyes. "Yes," she said, "it is."
[CHAPTER IV.]
THEN began a babel of tongues. The book was "elegant!" "Charming!" Everybody said it was the best one from that popular writer's pen. The "critics were just raving over it." "Certainly it was written in a most fascinating manner."