Paul Patoff

ram, which I had not cared to trust to a servant. The weather had suddenly cleared, and there had been a sharp frost

s; it was very cold, and I walked fast; the brittle, frozen mud of the road broke beneath my feet with a creaking, crunching so

n the house which were never opened; but no one had ever proposed to show them to me, and I was not sufficiently curious to ask permission to visit the disused apartments. I had observed, however, that a wing of the building ran into an inclosure, surrounded by a wall seven or eight feet high, against which were ranged upon the one side a series of hot-houses, while another formed th

the delicate southern fruit in the unkindly air of England, and the branches and stems, all wrapped in straw against the frost, looked unhappy and unnatural in the cold moonlight. I stood looking at them, with my hands in my pockets, thinking somewhat regretfully of my southern birthplace. I smiled at myself and turned away, but as I went the very faintest echo of a laugh seemed to come from the other side of the wall. It sounded disagreeably in the stillness, and I slowly finished my walk around the house and came back to the front door, still wondering who it was that had laughed at me from behind the wall in the moonlight. There was certainly no original re

r. Griggs," said Hermione; "do,

, on the following day. It was Thursday, and Christmas was that day week. John Carvel seemed unusually depressed; his words were few and very grave, and he did not smile, but answered

wered John, "he is

ught he was so im

r extremities moved impatiently from time to time. Chrysophrasia was not present, a circumstance which made it seem likely that she might have been the person who had laughed behind the wa

lady, at the complicated form of expression. I mean merely that if two people who like very different things live in the same room, each of them will try to give the place the look he or she likes. At Carv

r money; and John had given a great deal of money for them. Besides the pictures, there stood in the drawing-room an enormous leathern easy-chair, of the old-fashioned type with semicircular wings projecting forward from the high back on each side, made to protect the rheum

g in the drawing-room at Carvel Place. Here and there, also, were little shelves of oak in the common Anglomaniac style of woodwork, ornamented with trefoils, crosses, circles, and triangles, and containing a curious collection of sacred literature, beginning with the ancient volume entitled Wilberforce's View, including the poetry published in a series of Lyras,-Lyra Anglicana, Lyra Germanica, and so on,-culminating at last in the works of Dr. Pus

but of a green color, vivid enough to elicit Chrysophrasia's most eloquent disapprobation; there were several embroideries of a sufficiently harmless nature, the work of Mary Carvel's patient fingers, but conceived in a style no longer popular; and on the whole, there was a g

er bed. Beneath the many-colored light from this Gothic window-for she insisted upon the pointed arch-Miss Dabstreak had made her own especial corner of the drawing-room. There one might see strange pots and plates, and withered rushes, and fantastic greenish draperies of Eastern weft, which, however, would not fetch five piastres a yard in the bazaar of Stamboul, curious water-col

omo-lithograph, and connected it with both the pictures by a drooping scarf of faint pink silk; she had adorned the engraving of Raphael's Transfiguration with a bit of Broussa embroidery, because it looked so very Oriental; and she had bedizened Mary Carvel's water-color view of Car

marvelously quick to understand, yet tenacious and slow to forget. The constant attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable opinions of her mother and aunt had given Hermione a certain versatility of thought, and a certain capacity to see both sides of the question when not under the momentary influence of her enthusiasm. She is, and was even then, a fine type of the English girl who has grown up under the most favorable circumstances; that is to say, with an excellent education and a decided preference for the country. It is not necessary to allow her any of the privileges and immunities usually granted to exceptional people; in any ordinary position of life she would bear the test of any ordinary difficulty very well. She inherits common sense from her father, an honest co

shelf, or table, or window-seat, filling all available spaces with a profusion of roses, geraniums, and blossoms of every kind that chanced to be in season. Flowers in a room will do what nothing else can accomplish. The eye turns gladly to the living plant, when wearied and strained with the incongruities of inanimate things. A pot of pinks makes the lowliest and most dismal cottage chamber look gay by comparison; a single rose in a glass of

fineness and delicacy. Her soft brown hair coils closely on her small, well-shaped head; her gentle, serious blue eyes look tenderly on all that lives and has being within the circle of her sight; her small mouth smiles graciously and readily, though sometimes a little sadly; and her pleasant voice has a frank ring in it that is good to hear. Her slight fingers, neither too lo

one might not admire them, one could not despise them. The young girl loves all that is beautiful: not as Chrysophrasia loves it, by sheer force of habitual affectation, without discernment and without real enjoyment, but from the bottom of her heart, from the well-springs of her own beautiful soul; knowing and understanding the great divisions between the graceful and the clumsy, between the true and the false, the lovely and the unlovely. The extraordinary passion for the eccentric is tempered to an honest and natural craving after the beautiful; the admixture of the gentleness the girl has inherited from her saintly mother and of the genuine common sense which characterizes her father has produced a rational desire and ability to

t only love her, but excuse readily enough those of their own bad qualities which they fancy they recognize in her; for, indeed, nothing ever seems bad in Hermione, and I doubt greatly whether there is not some touch of white magic in her nature that protects her and shields her, so that bad things turn to good when they come near her. If she likes the curious notions of her aunt, she certainly changes them so that they become delicate fancies, and agree together with the gentle charity she has from her mother an

simple affirmation to the effect that he was a very learned man, the you

people are very often du

vely," I

akes th

the room while we were speaking, and sank upon the couch with a little sigh. "They have no aspira

dull?" asked Mrs.

nd agricultural shows, and the Rural Dean,-anything

ue that there cannot be much boredom among barbarous tribes who are always scalpi

teresting," murmured Chrysophr

one l

d like to see it done, aun

ed Mrs. Carvel, in gentle horror. But she immediately

s with me that learned people are all oppressively dull, and that t

yourself, Griggs?" asked John,

shaved a poodle with a pocket-knife

of wheels without, and John rose

ed, moving towards the door that led into

ained standing in the hall. The professor's luggage was rather voluminous, and various boxes, bags, and portmanteaus bore the labels of many journeys. The men brought them in from the dog-cart; the strong cob pawed the gravel a little, and the moonlight flashed back from the silver harness, from the smooth varnished dashboard, the polished chains, and the

ss be unable to connect him in my mind with any date, or country, or circumstance. In vain I went over many scenes of my life, endeavoring to limit this remembrance to a particular period. I argued that our meeting, if we really had met, could not have taken place many years ago, for I recognized exactly the curling gray hairs in the professor's beard, the wrinkles in his forehead, and a slight mark upon one cheek, just below the eye. I recollected the same spectacles; the same bushy, cropped gray hair; the same massive, square head set upon a sho

the fire, rubbing his hands and answering all manner of questions that were put to him. He appeared to be an old friend of the family, to judge by the conversation, and yet I was positively certain that I had never seen him at Carvel Place. He knew all the family, however, and seemed familiar with their tastes and pursuits: he inquired about John's manufacturing interests, and about Mrs. Carvel's

his way, found it hard to make any headway against the professor's eloquence, though I could sometimes see that he was far from being convinced. The professor had been everywhere and had seen most things; he talked with absolute conviction of what he had seen, and avoided talking of what he had not seen, doubtless inferring that it was not wo

ime. We had no sooner risen from dinner than Jo

ery important business with Professor Cutter, which will not keep unt

te in the house to be treated without ceremony, and I did not care for anybody's com

ell why I so longed to recollect the professor's face; I only remember that the effort was intense, but wholly fruitless. I lay back in the deep leathern easy-chair, and all sorts of visions flitted before my half-closed eyes,-visions of good and visions of evil, visions of yesterday and visions of long ago. Somehow I fell to thinking about the lattice-covered door in the wall, and I caught myself wondering wh

other looks and words and attitudes in quick succession, until the chain is complete. So it happened to me, when I saw the learned professor standing by the table, w

ould have been celebrated as an operator had he not one day inherited a private fortune, which permitted him to abandon his surgical practice in favor of a special branch for which he kn

an easy-chair by my side, and

make you out at first. You were at Weisse

me curiously for several

the rope," he said at last.

s a shor

y more of that lady?"

han I knew yours," I replied. "I took you for

e polished floor out

anything to Carvel about that ma

tered the room. He was a lit

thought you would frat

ing our be

ould be brothers and equal," sa

brothers, should not be as good as any other visionary aim for tangible earthly government; but it certainly does not seem so easy of realization, nor s

eedom?" asked the professor, laughing a li

uld I attack America

s our republic with the fashionable liberty-fraternity-and-equality doctrines of European emancipation; still less with the commun

tching his feet out towards the fire. The professor turned the

iast and a rider of hobby-h

w; you must a

e professor. "I should say you belonged to a cla

o you

an ask, the most difficult to answ

f past experience to pr

t me to tell you the whole of my past experience, in order that y

. "You seem to take to argument as fish to the water. You o

e a show of hospitality. The professor interested me, but I could see that we were boring Carvel. The conversation la

oom, and all of them looked towards John and the professor, as though expecting something.

said Mrs. Carvel, as though to break the