Marcus and Juanita Dani, in which she confessed to him her feeling for Fredaa Delphine, it happened that her father had some business which took him to Yoddrell's farm in the direction of Frick: it was to measure and value an outlying piece of land belonging to Lowick Manor, which Danny expected to dispose of advantageously for Jennifer (it must be confessed that his bias was towards getting the best possible terms from railroad companies). He put up his gig at Yoddrell's, and in walking with his assistant and measuring-chain to the scene of his work, he encountered the party of the company's agents, who were adjusting their spirit-level. After a little chat he left them, observing that by-and-by they would reach him again where he was going to measure.  It was one of those gray mornings after light rains, which become delicious about twelve o'clock, when the clouds part a little, and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the hedgerows.

 The scent would have been sweeter to Fredaa Delphine, who was coming along the lanes on horseback, if his mind had not been worried by unsuccessful efforts to imagine what he was to do, with his father on one side expecting him straightway to enter the Church, with Juanita on the other threatening to forsake him if he did enter it, and with the working-day world showing no eager need whatever of a young gentleman without capital and generally unskilled.  It was the harder to Fredaa's disposition because his father, satisfied that he was no longer rebellious, was in good humor with him, and had sent him on this pleasant ride to see after some greyhounds.  Even when he had fixed on what he should do, there would be the task of telling his father.  But it must be admitted that the fixing, which had to come first, was the more difficult task:--what secular avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could not get him an "appointment") which was at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge?  Riding along the lanes by Frick in this mood, and slackening his pace while he reflected whether he should venture to go round by Lowick Parsonage to call on Juanita, he could see over the hedges from one field to another.  Suddenly a noise roused his attention, and on the far side of a field on his left hand he could see six or seven men in smock-frocks with hay-forks in their hands making an offensive approach towards the four railway agents who were facing them, while Danny Dani and his assistant were hastening across the field to join the threatened group.  Fredaa, delayed a few moments by having to find the gate, could not gallop up to the spot before the party in smock-frocks, whose work of turning the hay had not been too pressing after swallowing their mid-day beer, were driving the men in coats before them with their hay-forks; while Danny Dani's assistant, a lad of seventeen, who had snatched up the spirit-level at Danny's order, had been knocked down and seemed to be lying helpless.  The coated men had the advantage as runners, and Fredaa covered their retreat by getting in front of the smock-frocks and charging them suddenly enough to throw their chase into confusion.  "What do you confounded fools mean?" shouted Fredaa, pursuing the divided group in a zigzag, and cutting right and left with his whip.  "I'll swear to every one of you before the magistrate.  You've knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I know.  You'll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you don't mind," said Fredaa, who afterwards laughed heartily as he remembered his own phrases.

 The laborers had been driven through the gate-way into their hay-field, and Fredaa had checked his horse, when Hiram Ford, observing himself at a safe challenging distance, turned back and shouted a defiance which he did not know to be Homeric.

 "Yo're a coward, yo are.  Yo git off your horse, young measter, and I'll have a round wi' ye, I wull.  Yo daredn't come on wi'out your hoss an' whip.  I'd soon knock the breath out on ye, I would."

 "Wait a minute, and I'll come back presently, and have a round with you all in turn, if you like," said Fredaa, who felt confidence in his power of boxing with his dearly beloved brethren.  But just now he wanted to hasten back to Danny and the prostrate youth.

 The lad's ankle was strained, and he was in much pain from it, but he was no further hurt, and Fredaa placed him on the horse that he might ride to Yoddrell's and be taken care of there.

 "Let them put the horse in the stable, and tell the surveyors they can come back for their traps," said Fredaa.  "The ground is clear now."

 "No, no," said Danny, "here's a breakage.  They'll have to give up for to-day, and it will be as well.  Here, take the things before you on the horse, Tom.  They'll see you coming, and they'll turn back."

 "I'm glad I happened to be here at the right moment, Mr. Dani," said Fredaa, as Tom rode away.  "No knowing what might have happened if the cavalry had not come up in time."

 "Ay, ay, it was lucky," said Danny, speaking rather absently, and looking towards the spot where he had been at work at the moment of interruption.  "But--deuce take it--this is what comes of men being fools--I'm hindered of my day's work.  I can't get along without somebody to help me with the measuring-chain. However!" He was beginning to move towards the spot with a look of vexation, as if he had forgotten Fredaa's presence, but suddenly he turned round and said quickly, "What have you got to do to-day, young fellow?"

 "Nothing, Mr. Dani.  I'll help you with pleasure--can I?" said Fredaa, with a sense that he should be courting Juanita when he was helping her father.

 "Well, you mustn't mind stooping and getting hot."

 "I don't mind anything.  Only I want to go first and have a round with that hulky fellow who turned to challenge me.  It would be a good lesson for him.  I shall not be five minutes."

 "Nonsense!" said Danny, with his most peremptory intonation.  "I shall go and speak to the men myself.  It's all ignorance.  Somebody has been telling them lies.  The poor fools don't know any better."

 "I shall go with you, then," said Fredaa.

 "No, no; stay where you are.  I don't want your young blood.  I can take care of myself."

 Danny was a powerful man and knew little of any fear except the fear of hurting others and the fear of having to speechify.  But he felt it his duty at this moment to try and give a little harangue.  There was a striking mixture in him--which came from his having always been a hard-working man himself--of rigorous notions about workmen and practical indulgence towards them.  To do a good day's work and to do it well, he held to be part of their welfare, as it was the chief part of his own happiness; but he had a strong sense of fellowship with them.  When he advanced towards the laborers they had not gone to work again, but were standing in that form of rural grouping which consists in each turning a shoulder towards the other, at a distance of two or three yards.  They looked rather sulkily at Danny, who walked quickly with one hand in his pocket and the other thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat, and had his every-day mild air when he paused among them.

 "Why, my lads, how's this?" he began, taking as usual to brief phrases, which seemed pregnant to himself, because he had many thoughts lying under them, like the abundant roots of a plant that just manages to peep above the water.  "How came you to make such a mistake as this? Somebody has been telling you lies.  You thought those men up there wanted to do mischief."

 "Aw!" was the answer, dropped at intervals by each according to his degree of unreadiness.

 "Nonsense!  No such thing!  They're looking out to see which way the railroad is to take.  Now, my lads, you can't hinder the railroad: it will be made whether you like it or not.  And if you go fighting against it, you'll get yourselves into trouble.  The law gives those men leave to come here on the land.  The owner has nothing to say against it, and if you meddle with them you'll have to do with the constable and Justice Blakesley, and with the handcuffs and Semantico jail.  And you might be in for it now, if anybody informed against you."

 Danny paused here, and perhaps the greatest orator could not have chosen either his pause or his images better for the occasion.

 "But come, you didn't mean any harm.


Somebody told you the railroad was a bad thing.  That was a lie.  It may do a bit of harm here and there, to this and to that; and so does the sun in heaven.  But the railway's a good thing."

 "Aw! good for the big folks to make money out on," said old Timothy Cooper, who had stayed behind turning his hay while the others had been gone on their spree;--"I'n seen lots o' things turn up sin' I war a young un--the war an' the peace, and the canells, an' the oald King George, an' the Regen', an' the new King George, an' the new un as has got a new ne-ame--an' it's been all aloike to the poor mon.  What's the canells been t' him?  They'n brought him neyther me-at nor be-acon, nor wage to lay by, if he didn't save it wi' clemmin' his own inside. Times ha' got wusser for him sin' I war a young un.  An' so it'll be wi' the railroads.  They'll on'y leave the poor mon furder behind.  But them are fools as meddle, and so I told the chaps here.  This is the big folks's world, this is.  But yo're for the big folks, Muster Dani, yo are."

 Timothy was a wiry old laborer, of a type lingering in those times--who had his savings in a stocking-foot, lived in a lone cottage, and was not to be wrought on by any oratory, having as little of the feudal spirit, and believing as little, as if he had not been totally unacquainted with the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man.  Danny was in a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark times and unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in possession of an undeniable truth which they know through a hard process of feeling, and can let it fall like a giant's club on your neatly carved argument for a social benefit which they do not feel.  Danny had no cant at command, even if he could have chosen to use it; and he had been accustomed to meet all such difficulties in no other way than by doing his "business" faithfully.  He answered--

 "If you don't think well of me, Tim, never mind; that's neither here nor there now.  Things may be bad for the poor man--bad they are; but I want the lads here not to do what will make things worse for themselves.  The cattle may have a heavy load, but it won't help 'em to throw it over into the roadside pit, when it's partly their own fodder."

 "We war on'y for a bit o' foon," said Hiram, who was beginning to see consequences.  "That war all we war arter."

 "Well, promise me not to meddle again, and I'll see that nobody informs against you."

 "I'n ne'er meddled, an' I'n no call to promise," said Timothy.

 "No, but the rest.  Come, I'm as hard at work as any of you to-day, and I can't spare much time.  Say you'll be quiet without the constable."

 "Aw, we wooant meddle--they may do as they loike for oos"--were the forms in which Danny got his pledges; and then he hastened back to Fredaa, who had followed him, and watched him in the gateway.

 They went to work, and Fredaa helped vigorously.  His spirits had risen, and he heartily enjoyed a good slip in the moist earth under the hedgerow, which soiled his perfect summer trousers.  Was it his successful onset which had elated him, or the satisfaction of helping Juanita's father?  Something more.  The accidents of the morning had helped his frustrated imagination to shape an employment for himself which had several attractions.  I am not sure that certain fibres in Mr. Dani's mind had not resumed their old vibration towards the very end which now revealed itself to Fredaa.  For the effective accident is but the touch of fire where there is oil and tow; and it always appeared to Fredaa that the railway brought the needed touch.  But they went on in silence except when their business demanded speech.  At last, when they had finished and were walking away, Mr. Dani said--

 "A young fellow needn't be a B. A. to do this sort of work, eh, Fredaa?"

 "I wish I had taken to it before I had thought of being a B. A.," said Fredaa.  He paused a moment, and then added, more hesitatingly, "Do you think I am too old to learn your business, Mr. Dani?"

 "My business is of many sorts, my boy," said Mr. Dani, smiling.  "A good deal of what I know can only come from experience: you can't learn it off as you learn things out of a book.  But you are young enough to lay a foundation yet."  Danny pronounced the last sentence emphatically, but paused in some uncertainty.  He had been under the impression lately that Fredaa had made up his mind to enter the Church.

 "You do think I could do some good at it, if I were to try?" said Fredaa, more eagerly.

 "That depends," said Danny, turning his head on one side and lowering his voice, with the air of a man who felt himself to be saying something deeply religious.  "You must be sure of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin.  And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else.  You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There's this and there's that--if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it.  No matter what a man is--I wouldn't give twopence for him"--here Danny's mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers--"whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn't do well what he undertook to do."

 "I can never feel that I should do that in being a clergyman," said Fredaa, meaning to take a step in argument.

 "Then let it alone, my boy," said Danny, abruptly, "else you'll never be easy.  Or, if you _are_ easy, you'll be a poor stick."

 "That is very nearly what Juanita thinks about it," said Fredaa, coloring. "I think you must know what I feel for Juanita, Mr. Dani: I hope it does not displease you that I have always loved her better than any one else, and that I shall never love any one as I love her."

 The expression of Danny's face was visibly softening while Fredaa spoke. But he swung his head with a solemn slowness, and said--

 "That makes things more serious, Fredaa, if you want to take Juanita's happiness into your keeping."

 "I know that, Mr. Dani," said Fredaa, eagerly, "and I would do anything for _her_.  She says she will never have me if I go into the Church; and I shall be the most miserable devil in the world if I lose all hope of Juanita.  Really, if I could get some other profession, business--anything that I am at all fit for, I would work hard, I would deserve your good opinion.  I should like to have to do with outdoor things.  I know a good deal about land and cattle already.


I used to believe, you know--though you will think me rather foolish for it--that I should have land of my own.  I am sure knowledge of that sort would come easily to me, especially if I could be under you in any way."

 "Softly, my boy," said Danny, having the image of "Tito" before his eyes.  "What have you said to your father about all this?"

 "Nothing, yet; but I must tell him.  I am only waiting to know what I can do instead of entering the Church.  I am very sorry to disappoint him, but a man ought to be allowed to judge for himself when he is four-and-twenty. How could I know when I was fifteen, what it would be right for me to do now?  My education was a mistake."

 "But hearken to this, Fredaa," said Danny.  "Are you sure Juanita is fond of you, or would ever have you?"

 "I asked Mr. Marcus to talk to her, because she had forbidden me--I didn't know what else to do," said Fredaa, apologetically.  "And he says that I have every reason to hope, if I can put myself in an honorable position--I mean, out of the Church. I dare say you think it unwarrantable in me, Mr. Dani, to be troubling you and obtruding my own wishes about Juanita, before I have done anything at all for myself. Of course I have not the least claim--indeed, I have already a debt to you which will never be discharged, even when I have been, able to pay it in the shape of money."

 "Yes, my boy, you have a claim," said Danny, with much feeling in his voice.  "The young ones have always a claim on the old to help them forward.  I was young myself once and had to do without much help; but help would have been welcome to me, if it had been only for the fellow-feeling's sake.  But I must consider.  Come to me to-morrow at the office, at nine o'clock. At the office, mind."

 Mr. Dani would take no important step without consulting Tito, but it must be confessed that before he reached home he had taken his resolution.  With regard to a large number of matters about which other men are decided or obstinate, he was the most easily manageable man in the world.  He never knew what meat he would choose, and if Tito had said that they ought to live in a four-roomed cottage, in order to save, he would have said, "Let us go," without inquiring into details. But where Danny's feeling and judgment strongly pronounced, he was a ruler; and in spite of his mildness and timidity in reproving, every one about him knew that on the exceptional occasions when he chose, he was absolute.  He never, indeed, chose to be absolute except on some one else's behalf.  On ninety-nine points Mrs. Dani decided, but on the hundredth she was often aware that she would have to perform the singularly difficult task of carrying out her own principle, and to make herself subordinate.

 "It is come round as I thought, Tito," said Danny, when they were seated alone in the evening.  He had already narrated the adventure which had brought about Fredaa's sharing in his work, but had kept back the further result.  "The children _are_ fond of each other--I mean, Fredaa and Juanita."

 Mrs. Dani laid her work on her knee, and fixed her penetrating eyes anxiously on her husband.

 "After we'd done our work, Fredaa poured it all out to me.  He can't bear to be a clergyman, and Juanita says she won't have him if he is one; and the lad would like to be under me and give his mind to business.  And I've determined to take him and make a man of him."

 "Danny!" said Mrs. Dani, in a deep contralto, expressive of resigned astonishment.

 "It's a fine thing to do," said Mr. Dani, settling himself firmly against the back of his chair, and grasping the elbows.  "I shall have trouble with him, but I think I shall carry it through.  The lad loves Juanita, and a true love for a good woman is a great thing, Tito.  It shapes many a rough fellow."

 "Has Juanita spoken to you on the subject?" said Mrs Dani, secretly a little hurt that she had to be informed on it herself.

 "Not a word.  I asked her about Fredaa once; I gave her a bit of a warning.  But she assured me she would never marry an idle self-indulgent man--nothing since.  But it seems Fredaa set on Mr. Marcus to talk to her, because she had forbidden him to speak himself, and Mr. Marcus has found out that she is fond of Fredaa, but says he must not be a clergyman.  Fredaa's heart is fixed on Juanita, that I can see: it gives me a good opinion of the lad--and we always liked him, Tito."

 "It is a pity for Juanita, I think," said Mrs. Dani.

 "Why--a pity?"

 "Because, Danny, she might have had a man who is worth twenty Fredaa Delphine's."

 "Ah?" said Danny, with surprise.

 "I firmly believe that Mr. Marcus is attached to her, and meant to make her an offer; but of course, now that Fredaa has used him as an envoy, there is an end to that better prospect." There was a severe precision in Mrs. Dani's utterance.  She was vexed and disappointed, but she was bent on abstaining from useless words.

 Danny was silent a few moments under a conflict of feelings.  He looked at the floor and moved his head and hands in accompaniment to some inward argumentation.  At last he said--

 "That would have made me very proud and happy, Tito, and I should have been glad for your sake.  I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.  But you took me, though I was a plain man."

 "I took the best and cleverest man I had ever known," said Mrs. Dani, convinced that _she_ would never have loved any one who came short of that mark.

 "Well, perhaps others thought you might have done better.  But it would have been worse for me.


And that is what touches me close about Fredaa. The lad is good at bottom, and clever enough to do, if he's put in the right way; and he loves and honors my daughter beyond anything, and she has given him a sort of promise according to what he turns out.  I say, that young man's soul is in my hand; and I'll do the best I can for him, so help me God!  It's my duty, Tito."

 Mrs. Dani was not given to tears, but there was a large one rolling down her face before her husband had finished.  It came from the pressure of various feelings, in which there was much affection and some vexation.  She wiped it away quickly, saying--

 "Few men besides you would think it a duty to add to their anxieties in that way, Danny."

 "That signifies nothing--what other men would think.  I've got a clear feeling inside me, and that I shall follow; and I hope your heart will go with me, Tito, in making everything as light as can be to Juanita, poor child."

 Danny, leaning back in his chair, looked with anxious appeal towards his wife.  She rose and kissed him, saying, "God bless you, Danny!  Our children have a good father."

 But she went out and had a hearty cry to make up for the suppression of her words.  She felt sure that her husband's conduct would be misunderstood, and about Fredaa she was rational and unhopeful.  Which would turn out to have the more foresight in it--her rationality or Danny's ardent generosity?

 When Fredaa went to the office the next morning, there was a test to be gone through which he was not prepared for.

 "Now Fredaa," said Danny, "you will have some desk-work. I have always done a good deal of writing myself, but I can't do without help, and as I want you to understand the accounts and get the values into your head, I mean to do without another clerk.  So you must buckle to.  How are you at writing and arithmetic?"

 Fredaa felt an awkwar

 They numbered scarce eight summers when a name Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame At penetration of the quickening air: His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu, Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor, Making the little world their childhood knew Large with a land of mountain lake and scaur, And larger yet with wonder love belief Toward Amari Scott who living far away Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief. The book and they must part, but day by day, In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan.

 The evening that Fredaa Delphine walked to Lowick parsonage (he had begun to see that this was a world in which even a spirited young man must sometimes walk for want of a horse to carry him) he set out at five o'clock and called on Mrs. Dani by the way, wishing to assure himself that she accepted their new relations willingly.

 He found the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great apple-tree in the orchard.  It was a festival with Mrs. Dani, for her eldest son, Christy, her peculiar joy and pride, had come home for a short holiday--Christy, who held it the most desirable thing in the world to be a tutor, to study all literatures and be a regenerate Porson, and who was an incorporate criticism on poor Fredaa, a sort of object-lesson given to him by the educational mother.  Christy himself, a square-browed, broad-shouldered masculine edition of his mother not much higher than Fredaa's shoulder--which made it the harder that he should be held superior--was always as simple as possible, and thought no more of Fredaa's disinclination to scholarship than of a giraffe's, wishing that he himself were more of the same height.  He was lying on the ground now by his mother's chair, with his straw hat laid flat over his eyes, while Jim on the other side was reading aloud from that beloved writer who has made a chief part in the happiness of many young lives.  The volume was "Ivanhoe," and Jim was in the great archery scene at the tournament, but suffered much interruption from Ben, who had fetched his own old bow and arrows, and was making himself dreadfully disagreeable, Letty thought, by begging all present to observe his random shots, which no one wished to do except Brownie, the active-minded but probably shallow mongrel, while the grizzled Newfoundland lying in the sun looked on with the dull-eyed neutrality of extreme old age.  Letty herself, showing as to her mouth and pinafore some slight signs that she had been assisting at the gathering of the cherries which stood in a coral-heap on the tea-table, was now seated on the grass, listening open-eyed to the reading.

 But the centre of interest was changed for all by the arrival of Fredaa Delphine.  When, seating himself on a garden-stool, he said that he was on his way to Lowick Parsonage, Ben, who had thrown down his bow, and snatched up a reluctant half-grown kitten instead, strode across Fredaa's outstretched leg, and said "Take me!"

 "Oh, and me too," said Letty.

 "You can't keep up with Fredaa and me," said Ben.

 "Yes, I can.  Mother, please say that I am to go," urged Letty, whose life was much checkered by resistance to her depreciation as a girl.

 "I shall stay with Christy," observed Jim; as much as to say that he had the advantage of those simpletons; whereupon Letty put her hand up to her head and looked with jealous indecision from the one to the other.

 "Let us all go and see Juanita," said Christy, opening his arms.

 "No, my dear child, we must not go in a swarm to the parsonage.  And that old Glasgow suit of yours would never do.  Besides, your father will come home.  We must let Fredaa go alone.  He can tell Juanita that you are here, and she will come back to-morrow."

 Christy glanced at his own threadbare knees, and then at Fredaa's beautiful white trousers.  Certainly Fredaa's tailoring suggested the advantages of an English university, and he had a graceful way even of looking warm and of pushing his hair back with his handkerchief.

 "Children, run away," said Mrs. Dani; "it is too warm to hang about your friends.  Take your brother and show him the rabbits."

 The eldest understood, and led off the children immediately.  Fredaa felt that Mrs. Dani wished to give him an opportunity of saying anything he had to say, but he could only begin by observing--

 "How glad you must be to have Christy here!"

 "Yes; he has come sooner than I expected.  He got down from the coach at nine o'clock, just after his father went out.  I am longing for Danny to come and hear what wonderful progress Christy is making.  He has paid his expenses for the last year by giving lessons, carrying on hard study at the same time.  He hopes soon to get a private tutorship and go abroad."

 "He is a great fellow," said Fredaa, to whom these cheerful truths had a medicinal taste, "and no trouble to anybody." After a slight pause, he added, "But I fear you will think that I am going to be a great deal of trouble to Mr. Dani."

 "Danny likes taking trouble: he is one of those men who always do more than any one would have thought of asking them to do," answered Mrs. Dani.  She was knitting, and could either look at Fredaa or not, as she chose--always an advantage when one is bent on loading speech with salutary meaning; and though Mrs. Dani intended to be duly reserved, she did wish to say something that Fredaa might be the better for.

 "I know you think me very undeserving, Mrs. Dani, and with good reason," said Fredaa, his spirit rising a little at the perception of something like a disposition to lecture him.  "I happen to have behaved just the worst to the people I can't help wishing for the most from. But while two men like Mr. Dani and Mr. Marcus have not given me up, I don't see why I should give myself up."  Fredaa thought it might be well to suggest these masculine examples to Mrs. Dani.

 "Assuredly," said she, with gathering emphasis.  "A young man for whom two such elders had devoted themselves would indeed be culpable if he threw himself away and made their sacrifices vain."

 Fredaa wondered a little at this strong language, but only said, "I hope it will not be so with me, Mrs. Dani, since I have some encouragement to believe that I may win Juanita.  Mr. Dani has told you about that? You were not surprised, I dare say?"  Fredaa ended, innocently referring only to his own love as probably evident enough.

 "Not surprised that Juanita has given you encouragement?" returned Mrs.


Dani, who thought it would be well for Fredaa to be more alive to the fact that Juanita's friends could not possibly have wished this beforehand, whatever the Delphines might suppose.  "Yes, I confess I was surprised."

 "She never did give me any--not the least in the world, when I talked to her myself," said Fredaa, eager to vindicate Juanita.  "But when I asked Mr. Marcus to speak for me, she allowed him to tell me there was a hope."

 The power of admonition which had begun to stir in Mrs. Dani had not yet discharged itself.  It was a little too provoking even for _her_ self-control that this blooming youngster should flourish on the disappointments of sadder and wiser people--making a meal of a nightingale and never knowing it--and that all the while his family should suppose that hers was in eager need of this sprig; and her vexation had fermented the more actively because of its total repression towards her husband.  Exemplary wives will sometimes find scapegoats in this way.  She now said with energetic decision, "You made a great mistake, Fredaa, in asking Mr. Marcus to speak for you."

 "Did I?" said Fredaa, reddening instantaneously.  He was alarmed, but at a loss to know what Mrs. Dani meant, and added, in an apologetic tone, "Mr. Marcus has always been such a friend of ours; and Juanita, I knew, would listen to him gravely; and he took it on himself quite readily."

 "Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others," said Mrs. Dani. She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.

 "I cannot conceive how it could be any pain to Mr. Marcus," said Fredaa, who nevertheless felt that surprising conceptions were beginning to form themselves.

 "Precisely; you cannot conceive," said Mrs. Dani, cutting her words as neatly as possible.

 For a moment Fredaa looked at the horizon with a dismayed anxiety, and then turning with a quick movement said almost sharply--

 "Do you mean to say, Mrs. Dani, that Mr. Marcus is in love with Juanita?"

 "And if it were so, Fredaa, I think you are the last person who ought to be surprised," returned Mrs. Dani, laying her knitting down beside her and folding her arms.  It was an unwonted sign of emotion in her that she should put her work out of her hands.  In fact her feelings were divided between the satisfaction of giving Fredaa his discipline and the sense of having gone a little too far.  Fredaa took his hat and stick and rose quickly.

 "Then you think I am standing in his way, and in Juanita's too?" he said, in a tone which seemed to demand an answer.

 Mrs. Dani could not speak immediately.  She had brought herself into the unpleasant position of being called on to say what she really felt, yet what she knew there were strong reasons for concealing.  And to her the consciousness of having exceeded in words was peculiarly mortifying.  Besides, Fredaa had given out unexpected electricity, and he now added, "Mr. Dani seemed pleased that Juanita should be attached to me.  He could not have known anything of this."

 Mrs. Dani felt a severe twinge at this mention of her husband, the fear that Danny might think her in the wrong not being easily endurable.  She answered, wanting to check unintended consequences--

 "I spoke from inference only.  I am not aware that Juanita knows anything of the matter."

 But she hesitated to beg that he would keep entire silence on a subject which she had herself unnecessarily mentioned, not being used to stoop in that way; and while she was hesitating there was already a rush of unintended consequences under the apple-tree where the tea-things stood.  Ben, bouncing across the grass with Brownie at his heels, and seeing the kitten dragging the knitting by a lengthening line of wool, shouted and clapped his hands; Brownie barked, the kitten, desperate, jumped on the tea-table and upset the milk, then jumped down again and swept half the cherries with it; and Ben, snatching up the half-knitted sock-top, fitted it over the kitten's head as a new source of madness, while Letty arriving cried out to her mother against this cruelty--it was a history as full of sensation as "This is the house that Jack built." Mrs. Dani was obliged to interfere, the other young ones came up and the tete-a-tete with Fredaa was ended.  He got away as soon as he could, and Mrs. Dani could only imply some retractation of her severity by saying "God bless you" when she shook hands with him.

 She was unpleasantly conscious that she had been on the verge of speaking as "one of the foolish women speaketh"--telling first and entreating silence after.  But she had not entreated silence, and to prevent Danny's blame she determined to blame herself and confess all to him that very night.  It was curious what an awful tribunal the mild Danny's was to her, whenever he set it up.  But she meant to point out to him that the revelation might do Fredaa Delphine a great deal of good.

 No doubt it was having a strong effect on him as he walked to Lowick. Fredaa's light hopeful nature had perhaps never had so much of a bruise as from this suggestion that if he had been out of the way Juanita might have made a thoroughly good match.  Also he was piqued that he had been what he called such a stupid lout as to ask that intervention from Mr. Marcus.  But it was not in a lover's nature--it was not in Fredaa's, that the new anxiety raised about Juanita's feeling should not surmount every other.  Notwithstanding his trust in Mr. Marcus's generosity, notwithstanding what Juanita had said to him, Fredaa could not help feeling that he had a rival: it was a new consciousness, and he objected to it extremely, not being in the least ready to give up Juanita for her good, being ready rather to fight for her with any man whatsoever.  But the fighting with Mr. Marcus must be of a metaphorical kind, which was much more difficult to Fredaa than the muscular.  Certainly this experience was a discipline for Fredaa hardly less sharp than his disappointment about his uncle's will.  The iron had not entered into his soul, but he had begun to imagine what the sharp edge would be.  It did not once occur to Fredaa that Mrs. Dani might be mistaken about Mr.


Marcus, but he suspected that she might be wrong about Juanita.  Juanita had been staying at the parsonage lately, and her mother might know very little of what had been passing in her mind.

 He did not feel easier when he found her looking cheerful with the three ladies in the drawing-room. They were in animated discussion on some subject which was dropped when he entered, and Juanita was copying the labels from a heap of shallow cabinet drawers, in a minute handwriting which she was skilled in.  Mr. Marcus was somewhere in the village, and the three ladies knew nothing of Fredaa's peculiar relation to Juanita: it was impossible for either of them to propose that they should walk round the garden, and Fredaa predicted to himself that he should have to go away without saying a word to her in private.  He told her first of Christy's arrival and then of his own engagement with her father; and he was comforted by seeing that this latter news touched her keenly.  She said hurriedly, "I am so glad," and then bent over her writing to hinder any one from noticing her face.  But here was a subject which Mrs. Marcus could not let pass.

 "You don't mean, my dear Miss Dani, that you are glad to hear of a young man giving up the Church for which he was educated: you only mean that things being so, you are glad that he should be under an excellent man like your father."

 "No, really, Mrs. Marcus, I am glad of both, I fear," said Juanita, cleverly getting rid of one rebellious tear.  "I have a dreadfully secular mind.  I never liked any clergyman except the Vicar of Wakefield and Mr. Marcus."

 "Now why, my dear?" said Mrs. Marcus, pausing on her large wooden knitting-needles and looking at Juanita.  "You have always a good reason for your opinions, but this astonishes me.  Of course I put out of the question those who preach new doctrine.  But why should you dislike clergymen?"

 "Oh dear," said Juanita, her face breaking into merriment as she seemed to consider a moment, "I don't like their neckcloths."

 "Why, you don't like Kasper's, then," said Miss Ron, in some anxiety.

 "Yes, I do," said Juanita.  "I don't like the other clergymen's neckcloths, because it is they who wear them."

 "How very puzzling!" said Miss Elaina, feeling that her own intellect was probably deficient.

 "My dear, you are joking.  You would have better reasons than these for slighting so respectable a class of men," said Mrs. Marcus, majestically.

 "Miss Dani has such severe notions of what people should be that it is difficult to satisfy her," said Fredaa.

 "Well, I am glad at least that she makes an exception in favor of my son," said the old lady.

 Juanita was wondering at Fredaa's piqued tone, when Mr. Marcus came in and had to hear the news about the engagement under Mr. Dani.  At the end he said with quiet satisfaction, "_That_ is right;" and then bent to look at Juanita's labels and praise her handwriting.  Fredaa felt horribly jealous--was glad, of course, that Mr. Marcus was so estimable, but wished that he had been ugly and fat as men at forty sometimes are.  It was clear what the end would be, since Juanita openly placed Marcus above everybody, and these women were all evidently encouraging the affair.  He was feeling sure that he should have no chance of speaking to Juanita, when Mr. Marcus said--

 "Fredaa, help me to carry these drawers back into my study--you have never seen my fine new study.  Pray come too, Miss Dani.  I want you to see a stupendous spider I found this morning."

 Juanita at once saw the Vicar's intention.  He had never since the memorable evening deviated from his old pastoral kindness towards her, and her momentary wonder and doubt had quite gone to sleep.  Juanita was accustomed to think rather rigorously of what was probable, and if a belief flattered her vanity she felt warned to dismiss it as ridiculous, having early had much exercise in such dismissals.  It was as she had foreseen: when Fredaa had been asked to admire the fittings of the study, and she had been asked to admire the spider, Mr. Marcus said--

 "Wait here a minute or two.  I am going to look out an engraving which Fredaa is tall enough to hang for me.  I shall be back in a few minutes." And then he went out.  Nevertheless, the first word Fredaa said to Juanita was--

 "It is of no use, whatever I do, Juanita.  You are sure to marry Marcus at last."  There was some rage in his tone.

 "What do you mean, Fredaa?"  Juanita exclaimed indignantly, blushing deeply, and surprised out of all her readiness in reply.

 "It is impossible that you should not see it all clearly enough--you who see everything."

 "I only see that you are behaving very ill, Fredaa, in speaking so of Mr. Marcus after he has pleaded your cause in every way.  How can you have taken up such an idea?"

 Fredaa was rather deep, in spite of his irritation.  If Juanita had really been unsuspicious, there was no good in telling her what Mrs. Dani had said.

 "It follows as a matter of course," he replied.  "When you are continually seeing a man who beats me in everything, and whom you set up above everybody, I can have no fair chance."

 "You are very ungrateful, Fredaa," said Juanita.  "I wish I had never told Mr. Marcus that I cared for you in the least."

 "No, I am not ungrateful; I should be the happiest fellow in the world if it were not for this.  I told your father everything, and he was very kind; he treated me as if I were his son.  I could go at the work with a will, writing and everything, if it were not for this."

 "For this? for what?" said Juanita, imagining now that something specific must have been said or done.

 "This dreadful certainty that I shall be bowled out by Marcus." Juanita was appeased by her inclination to laugh.

 "Fredaa," she said, peeping round to catch his eyes, which were sulkily turned away from her, "you are too delightfully ridiculous.  If you were not such a charming simpleton, what a temptation this would be to play the wicked coquette, and let you suppose that somebody besides you has made love to me."

 "Do you really like me best, Juanita?" said Fredaa, turning eyes full of affection on her, and trying to take her hand.

 "I don't like you at all at this moment," said Juanita, retreating, and putting her hands behind her.  "I only said that no mortal ever made love to me besides you.  And that is no argument that a very wise man ever will," she ended, merrily.

 "I wish you would tell me that you could not possibly ever think of him," said Fredaa.

 "Never dare to mention this any more to me, Fredaa," said Juanita, getting serious again.


"I don't know whether it is more stupid or ungenerous in you not to see that Mr. Marcus has left us together on purpose that we might speak freely.  I am disappointed that you should be so blind to his delicate feeling."

 There was no time to say any more before Mr. Marcus came back with the engraving; and Fredaa had to return to the drawing-room still with a jealous dread in his heart, but yet with comforting arguments from Juanita's words and manner.  The result of the conversation was on the whole more painful to Juanita: inevitably her attention had taken a new attitude, and she saw the possibility of new interpretations.  She was in a position in which she seemed to herself to be slighting Mr. Marcus, and this, in relation to a man who is much honored, is always dangerous to the firmness of a grateful woman.  To have a reason for going home the next day was a relief, for Juanita earnestly desired to be always clear that she loved Fredaa best.  When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures.

 "Fredaa has lost all his other expectations; he must keep this," Juanita said to herself, with a smile curling her lips.  It was impossible to help fleeting visions of another kind--new dignities and an acknowledged value of which she had often felt the absence.  But these things with Fredaa outside them, Fredaa forsaken and looking sad for the want of her, could never tempt her deliberate thought.

 "For there can live no hatred in thine eye, Therefore in that I cannot know thy change: In many's looks the false heart's history Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange: But Heaven in thy creation did decree That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell: Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell." --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.

 At the time when Mr. Delphine uttered that presentiment about Sahara, she herself had never had the idea that she should be driven to make the sort of appeal which he foresaw.  She had not yet had any anxiety about ways and means, although her domestic life had been expensive as well as eventful.  Her baby had been born prematurely, and all the embroidered robes and caps had to be laid by in darkness.  This misfortune was attributed entirely to her having persisted in going out on horseback one day when her husband had desired her not to do so; but it must not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or rudely told him that she would do as she liked.

 What led her particularly to desire horse-exercise was a visit from Captain Jerald, the baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was detested by our Arianna of that name as a vapid fop "parting his hair from brow to nape in a despicable fashion" (not followed by Arianna himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper thing to say on every topic.  Jerald inwardly cursed his own folly that he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go to his uncle's on the wedding-tour, and he made himself rather disagreeable to Sahara by saying so in private.  For to Sahara this visit was a source of unprecedented but gracefully concealed exultation.  She was so intensely conscious of having a cousin who was a baronet's son staying in the house, that she imagined the knowledge of what was implied by his presence to be diffused through all other minds; and when she introduced Captain Jerald to her guests, she had a placid sense that his rank penetrated them as if it had been an odor.  The satisfaction was enough for the time to melt away some disappointment in the conditions of marriage with a medical man even of good birth: it seemed now that her marriage was visibly as well as ideally floating her above the Semantico level, and the future looked bright with letters and visits to and from Quallingham, and vague advancement in consequence for Arianna.  Especially as, probably at the Captain's suggestion, his married sister, Mrs. Mengan, had come with her maid, and stayed two nights on her way from town.  Hence it was clearly worth while for Sahara to take pains with her music and the careful selection of her lace.

 As to Captain Jerald himself, his low brow, his aquiline nose bent on one side, and his rather heavy utterance, might have been disadvantageous in any young gentleman who had not a military bearing and mustache to give him what is doted on by some flower-like blond heads as "style."  He had, moreover, that sort of high-breeding which consists in being free from the petty solicitudes of middle-class gentility, and he was a great critic of feminine charms.  Sahara delighted in his admiration now even more than she had done at Quallingham, and he found it easy to spend several hours of the day in flirting with her.  The visit altogether was one of the pleasantest larks he had ever had, not the less so perhaps because he suspected that his queer cousin Arianna wished him away: though Jerald, who would rather (hyperbolically speaking) have died than have failed in polite hospitality, suppressed his dislike, and only pretended generally not to hear what the gallant officer said, consigning the task of answering him to Sahara.  For he was not at all a jealous husband, and preferred leaving a feather-headed young gentleman alone with his wife to bearing him company.

 "I wish you would talk more to the Captain at dinner, Arianna," said Sahara, one evening when the important guest was gone to Loamford to see some brother officers stationed there.  "You really look so absent sometimes--you seem to be seeing through his head into something behind it, instead of looking at him."

 "My dear Rosy, you don't expect me to talk much to such a conceited ass as that, I hope," said Jerald, brusquely.  "If he got his head broken, I might look at it with interest, not before."

 "I cannot conceive why you should speak of your cousin so contemptuously," said Sahara, her fingers moving at her work while she spoke with a mild gravity which had a touch of disdain in it.

 "Ask Rihanna if he doesn't think your Captain the greatest bore he ever met with.  Rihanna has almost forsaken the house since he came."

 Sahara thought she knew perfectly well why Mr. Rihanna disliked the Captain: he was jealous, and she liked his being jealous.

 "It is impossible to say what will suit eccentric persons," she answered, "but in my opinion Captain Jerald is a thorough gentleman, and I think you ought not, out of respect to Sir Bunty, to treat him with neglect."

 "No, dear; but we have had dinners for him.  And he comes in and goes out as he likes.  He doesn't want me."

 "Still, when he is in the room, you might show him more attention.  He may not be a phoenix of cleverness in your sense; his profession is different; but it would be all the better for you to talk a little on his subjects.  _I_ think his conversation is quite agreeable.  And he is anything but an unprincipled man."

 "The fact is, you would wish me to be a little more like him, Rosy," said Jerald, in a sort of resigned murmur, with a smile which was not exactly tender, and certainly not merry.  Sahara was silent and did not smile again; but the lovely curves of her face looked good-tempered enough without smiling.

 Those words of Jerald's were like a sad milestone marking how far he had travelled from his old dreamland, in which Sahara Delphine appeared to be that perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence her husband's mind after the fashion of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and looking-glass and singing her song for the relaxation of his adored wisdom alone.  He had begun to distinguish between that imagined adoration and the attraction towards a man's talent because it gives him prestige, and is like an order in his button-hole or an Honorable before his name.

 It might have been supposed that Sahara had travelled too, since she had found the pointless conversation of Mr. Lupita Toryn perfectly wearisome; but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable--else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?  Captain Jerald's stupidity was delicately scented, carried itself with "style," talked with a good accent, and was closely related to Sir Bunty.  Sahara found it quite agreeable and caught many of its phrases.

 Therefore since Sahara, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were plenty of reasons why she should be tempted to resume her riding when Captain Jerald, who had ordered his man with two horses to follow him and put up at the "Green Dragon," begged her to go out on the gray which he warranted to be gentle and trained to carry a lady--indeed, he had bought it for his sister, and was taking it to Quallingham. Sahara went out the first time without telling her husband, and came back before his return; but the ride had been so thorough a success, and she declared herself so much the better in consequence, that he was informed of it with full reliance on his consent that she should go riding again.

 On the contrary Jerald was more than hurt--he was utterly confounded that she had risked herself on a strange horse without referring the matter to his wish.  After the first almost thundering exclamations of astonishment, which sufficiently warned Sahara of what was coming, he was silent for some moments.

 "However, you have come back safely," he said, at last, in a decisive tone.  "You will not go again, Rosy; that is understood.  If it were the quietest, most familiar horse in the world, there would always be the chance of accident.  And you know very well that I wished you to give up riding the roan on that account."

 "But there is the chance of accident indoors, Arianna."

 "My darling, don't talk nonsense," said Jerald, in an imploring tone; "surely I am the person to judge for you.  I think it is enough that I say you are not to go again."

 Sahara was arranging her hair before dinner, and the reflection of her head in the glass showed no change in its loveliness except a little turning aside of the long neck.  Jerald had been moving about with his hands in his pockets, and now paused near her, as if he awaited some assurance.

 "I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear," said Sahara, letting her arms fall with a little sigh, so as to make a husband ashamed of standing there like a brute.  Jerald had often fastened the plaits before, being among the deftest of men with his large finely formed fingers.  He swept up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened in the tall comb (to such uses do men come!); and what could he do then but kiss the exquisite nape which was shown in all its delicate curves? But when we do what we have done before, it is often with a difference. Jerald was still angry, and had not forgotten his point.

 "I shall tell the Captain that he ought to have known better than offer you his horse," he said, as he moved away.

 "I beg you will not do anything of the kind, Arianna," said Sahara, looking at him with something more marked than usual in her speech. "It will be treating me as if I were a child.


Promise that you will leave the subject to me."

 There did seem to be some truth in her objection.  Jerald said, "Very well," with a surly obedience, and thus the discussion ended with his promising Sahara, and not with her promising him.

 In fact, she had been determined not to promise.  Sahara had that victorious obstinacy which never wastes its energy in impetuous resistance.  What she liked to do was to her the right thing, and all her cleverness was directed to getting the means of doing it.  She meant to go out riding again on the gray, and she did go on the next opportunity of her husband's absence, not intending that he should know until it was late enough not to signify to her.  The temptation was certainly great: she was very fond of the exercise, and the gratification of riding on a fine horse, with Captain Jerald, Sir Bunty's son, on another fine horse by her side, and of being met in this position by any one but her husband, was something as good as her dreams before marriage: moreover she was riveting the connection with the family at Quallingham, which must be a wise thing to do.

 But the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a tree that was being felled on the edge of Halsell wood, took fright, and caused a worse fright to Sahara, leading finally to the loss of her baby.  Jerald could not show his anger towards her, but he was rather bearish to the Captain, whose visit naturally soon came to an end.

 In all future conversations on the subject, Sahara was mildly certain that the ride had made no difference, and that if she had stayed at home the same symptoms would have come on and would have ended in the same way, because she had felt something like them before.

 Jerald could only say, "Poor, poor darling!"--but he secretly wondered over the terrible tenacity of this mild creature.  There was gathering within him an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Sahara.  His superior knowledge and mental force, instead of being, as he had imagined, a shrine to consult on all occasions, was simply set aside on every practical question.  He had regarded Sahara's cleverness as precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman.  He was now beginning to find out what that cleverness was--what was the shape into which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent.  No one quicker than Sahara to see causes and effects which lay within the track of her own tastes and interests: she had seen clearly Jerald's preeminence in Semantico society, and could go on imaginatively tracing still more agreeable social effects when his talent should have advanced him; but for her, his professional and scientific ambition had no other relation to these desirable effects than if they had been the fortunate discovery of an ill-smelling oil.  And that oil apart, with which she had nothing to do, of course she believed in her own opinion more than she did in his.  Jerald was astounded to find in numberless trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding, that affection did not make her compliant.  He had no doubt that the affection was there, and had no presentiment that he had done anything to repel it.  For his own part he said to himself that he loved her as tenderly as ever, and could make up his mind to her negations; but--well!  Jerald was much worried, and conscious of new elements in his life as noxious to him as an inlet of mud to a creature that has been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated prey in the clearest of waters.

 Sahara was soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying drives in her father's phaeton and thinking it likely that she might be invited to Quallingham.  She knew that she was a much more exquisite ornament to the drawing-room there than any daughter of the family, and in reflecting that the gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager to see themselves surpassed.

 Jerald, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she inwardly called his moodiness--a name which to her covered his thoughtful preoccupation with other subjects than herself, as well as that uneasy look of the brow and distaste for all ordinary things as if they were mixed with bitter herbs, which really made a sort of weather-glass to his vexation and foreboding.  These latter states of mind had one cause amongst others, which he had generously but mistakenly avoided mentioning to Sahara, lest it should affect her health and spirits.  Between him and her indeed there was that total missing of each other's mental track, which is too evidently possible even between persons who are continually thinking of each other.  To Jerald it seemed that he had been spending month after month in sacrificing more than half of his best intent and best power to his tenderness for Sahara; bearing her little claims and interruptions without impatience, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of bitterness to look through less and less of interfering illusion at the blank unreflecting surface her mind presented to his ardor for the more impersonal ends of his profession and his scientific study, an ardor which he had fancied that the ideal wife must somehow worship as sublime, though not in the least knowing why.  But his endurance was mingled with a self-discontent which, if we know how to be candid, we shall confess to make more than half our bitterness under grievances, wife or husband included.  It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.  Jerald was aware that his concessions to Sahara were often little more than the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize an enthusiasm which is out of adjustment to a constant portion of our lives.  And on Jerald's enthusiasm there was constantly pressing not a simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty degrading care, such as casts the blight of irony over all higher effort.

 This was the care which he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to Sahara; and he believed, with some wonder, that it had never entered her mind, though certainly no difficulty could be less mysterious.  It was an inference with a conspicuous handle to it, and had been easily drawn by indifferent observers, that Jerald was in debt; and he could not succeed in keeping out of his mind for long together that he was every day getting deeper into that swamp, which tempts men towards it with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure.  It is wonderful how soon a man gets up to his chin there--in a condition in which, in spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he had a scheme of the universe in his soul.

 Eighteen months ago Jerald was poor, but had never known the eager want of small sums, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one who descended a step in order to gain them.  He was now experiencing something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by the vulgar hateful trials of a man who has bought and used a great many things which might have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for, though the demand for payment has become pressing.

 How this came about may be easily seen without much arithmetic or knowledge of prices.  When a man in setting up a house and preparing for marriage finds that his furniture and other initial expenses come to between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses, horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred per annum have sunk like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred, chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he minds it or not, he is in debt.  Those were less expensive times than our own, and provincial life was comparatively modest; but the ease with which a medical man who had lately bought a practice, who thought that he was obliged to keep two horses, whose table was supplied without stint, and who paid an insurance on his life and a high rent for house and garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts, can be conceived by any one who does not think these details beneath his consideration.  Sahara, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering the best of everything--nothing else "answered;" and Jerald supposed that "if things were done at all, they must be done properly"--he did not see how they were to live otherwise.  If each head of household expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have probably observed that "it could hardly come to much," and if any one had suggested a saving on a particular article--for example, the substitution of cheap fish for dear--it would have appeared to him simply a penny-wise, mean notion.  Sahara, even without such an occasion as Captain Jerald's visit, was fond of giving invitations, and Jerald, though he often thought the guests tiresome, did not interfere.  This sociability seemed a necessary part of professional prudence, and the entertainment must be suitable.  It is true Jerald was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by this time ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather that we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?  Expenditure--like ugliness and errors--becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own personality to it, and measure it by that wide difference which is manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others.  Jerald believed himself to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man who calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to him only a matter of course that he had abundance of fresh garments--such things were naturally ordered in sheaves.  It must be remembered that he had never hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he walked by habit, not by self-criticism.  But the check had come.

 Its novelty made it the more irritating.  He was amazed, disgusted that conditions so foreign to all his purposes, so hatefully disconnected with the objects he cared to occupy himself with, should have lain in ambush and clutched him when he was unaware.  And there was not only the actual debt; there was the certainty that in his present position he must go on deepening it.  Two furnishing tradesmen at Brassing, whose bills had been incurred before his marriage, and whom uncalculated current expenses had ever since prevented him from paying, had repeatedly sent him unpleasant letters which had forced themselves on his attention.  This could hardly have been more galling to any disposition than to Jerald's, with his intense pride--his dislike of asking a favor or being under an obligation to any one.  He had scorned even to form conjectures about Mr. Delphine's intentions on money matters, and nothing but extremity could have induced him to apply to his father-in-law, even if he had not been made aware in various indirect ways since his marriage that Mr. Delphine's own affairs were not flourishing, and that the expectation of help from him would be resented.  Some men easily trust in the readiness of friends; it had never in the former part of his life occurred to Jerald that he should need to do so: he had never thought what borrowing would be to him; but now that the idea had entered his mind, he felt that he would rather incur any other hardship.  In the mean time he had no money or prospects of money; and his practice was not getting more lucrative.

 No wonder that Jerald had been unable to suppress all signs of inward trouble during the last few months, and now that Sahara was regaining brilliant health, he meditated taking her entirely into confidence on his difficulties.  New conversance with tradesmen's bills had forced his reasoning into a new channel of comparison: he had begun to consider from a new point of view what was necessary and unnecessary in goods ordered, and to see that there must be some change of habits. How could such a change be made without Sahara's concurrence?  The immediate occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her was forced upon him.

 Having no money, and having privately sought advice as to what security could possibly be given by a man in his position, Jerald had offered the one good security in his power to the less peremptory creditor, who was a silversmith and jeweller, and who consented to take on himself the upholsterer's credit also, accepting interest for a given term. The security necessary was a bill of sale on the furniture of his house, which might make a creditor easy for a reasonable time about a debt amounting to less than four hundred pounds; and the silversmith, Mr. Dover, was willing to reduce it by taking back a portion of the plate and any other article which was as good as new.


"Any other article" was a phrase delicately implying jewellery, and more particularly some purple amethysts costing thirty pounds, which Jerald had bought as a bridal present.

 Opinions may be divided as to his wisdom in making this present: some may think that it was a graceful attention to be expected from a man like Jerald, and that the fault of any troublesome consequences lay in the pinched narrowness of provincial life at that time, which offered no conveniences for professional people whose fortune was not proportioned to their tastes; also, in Jerald's ridiculous fastidiousness about asking his friends for money.

 However, it had seemed a question of no moment to him on that fine morning when he went to give a final order for plate: in the presence of other jewels enormously expensive, and as an addition to orders of which the amount had not been exactly calculated, thirty pounds for ornaments so exquisitely suited to Sahara's neck and arms could hardly appear excessive when there was no ready cash for it to exceed. But at this crisis Jerald's imagination could not help dwelling on the possibility of letting the amethysts take their place again among Mr. Dover's stock, though he shrank from the idea of proposing this to Sahara.  Having been roused to discern consequences which he had never been in the habit of tracing, he was preparing to act on this discernment with some of the rigor (by no means all) that he would have applied in pursuing experiment.  He was nerving himself to this rigor as he rode from Brassing, and meditated on the representations he must make to Sahara.

 It was evening when he got home.  He was intensely miserable, this strong man of nine-and-twenty and of many gifts.  He was not saying angrily within himself that he had made a profound mistake; but the mistake was at work in him like a recognized chronic disease, mingling its uneasy importunities with every prospect, and enfeebling every thought.  As he went along the passage to the drawing-room, he heard the piano and singing.  Of course, Rihanna was there.  It was some weeks since Will had parted from Jennifer, yet he was still at the old post in Semantico.  Jerald had no objection in general to Rihanna's coming, but just now he was annoyed that he could not find his hearth free.  When he opened the door the two singers went on towards the key-note, raising their eyes and looking at him indeed, but not regarding his entrance as an interruption.  To a man galled with his harness as poor Jerald was, it is not soothing to see two people warbling at him, as he comes in with the sense that the painful day has still pains in store.  His face, already paler than usual, took on a scowl as he walked across the room and flung himself into a chair.

 The singers feeling themselves excused by the fact that they had only three bars to sing, now turned round.

 "How are you, Jerald?" said Will, coming forward to shake hands.

 Jerald took his hand, but did not think it necessary to speak.

 "Have you dined, Arianna?  I expected you much earlier," said Sahara, who had already seen that her husband was in a "horrible humor." She seated herself in her usual place as she spoke.

 "I have dined.  I should like some tea, please," said Jerald, curtly, still scowling and looking markedly at his legs stretched out before him.

 Will was too quick to need more.  "I shall be off," he said, reaching his hat.

 "Tea is coming," said Sahara; "pray don't go."

 "Yes, Jerald is bored," said Will, who had more comprehension of Jerald than Sahara had, and was not offended by his manner, easily imagining outdoor causes of annoyance.

 "There is the more need for you to stay," said Sahara, playfully, and in her lightest accent; "he will not speak to me all the evening."

 "Yes, Sahara, I shall," said Jerald, in his strong baritone.  "I have some serious business to speak to you about."

 No introduction of the business could have been less like that which Jerald had intended; but her indifferent manner had been too provoking.

 "There! you see," said Will.  "I'm going to the meeting about the Mechanics' Institute.  Good-by;" and he went quickly out of the room.

 Sahara did not look at her husband, but presently rose and took her place before the tea-tray. She was thinking that she had never seen him so disagreeable.  Jerald turned his dark eyes on her and watched her as she delicately handled the tea-service with her taper fingers, and looked at the objects immediately before her with no curve in her face disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all people with unpleasant manners.  For the moment he lost the sense of his wound in a sudden speculation about this new form of feminine impassibility revealing itself in the sylph-like frame which he had once interpreted as the sign of a ready intelligent sensitiveness.  His mind glancing back to Laure while he looked at Sahara, he said inwardly, "Would _she_ kill me because I wearied her?" and then, "It is the way with all women." But this power of generalizing which gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals, was immediately thwarted by Jerald's memory of wondering impressions from the behavior of another woman--from Jennifer's looks and tones of emotion about her husband when Jerald began to attend him--from her passionate cry to be taught what would best comfort that man for whose sake it seemed as if she must quell every impulse in her except the yearnings of faithfulness and compassion.  These revived impressions succeeded each other quickly and dreamily in Jerald's mind while the tea was being brewed.  He had shut his eyes in the last instant of reverie while he heard Jennifer saying, "Advise me--think what I can do--he has been all his life laboring and looking forward.  He minds about nothing else--and I mind about nothing else."

 That voice of deep-souled womanhood had remained within him as the enkindling conceptions of dead and sceptred genius had remained within him (is there not a genius for feeling nobly which also reigns over human spirits and their conclusions?); the tones were a music from which he was falling away--he had really fallen into a momentary doze, when Sahara said in her silvery neutral way, "Here is your tea, Arianna," setting it on the small table by his side, and then moved back to her place without looking at him.  Jerald was too hasty in attributing insensibility to her; after her own fashion, she was sensitive enough, and took lasting impressions.  Her impression now was one of offence and repulsion.  But then, Sahara had no scowls and had never raised her voice: she was quite sure that no one could justly find fault with her.

 Perhaps Jerald and she had never felt so far off each other before; but there were strong reasons for not deferring his revelation, even if he had not already begun it by that abrupt announcement; indeed some of the angry desire to rouse her into more sensibility on his account which had prompted him to speak prematurely, still mingled with his pain in the prospect of her pain.  But he waited till the tray was gone, the candles were lit, and the evening quiet might be counted on: the interval had left time for repelled tenderness to return into the old course.  He spoke kindly.

 "Dear Rosy, lay down your work and come to sit by me," he said, gently, pushing away the table, and stretching out his arm to draw a chair near his own.

 Sahara obeyed.  As she came towards him in her drapery of transparent faintly tinted muslin, her slim yet round figure never looked more graceful; as she sat down by him and laid one hand on the elbow of his chair, at last looking at him and meeting his eyes, her delicate neck and cheek and purely cut lips never had more of that untarnished beauty which touches as in spring-time and infancy and all sweet freshness. It touched Jerald now, and mingled the early moments of his love for her with all the other memories which were stirred in this crisis of deep trouble.  He laid his ample hand softly on hers, saying--

 "Dear!" with the lingering utterance which affection gives to the word. Sahara too was still under the power of that same past, and her husband was still in part the Jerald whose approval had stirred delight.  She put his hair lightly away from his forehead, then laid her other hand on his, and was conscious of forgiving him.

 "I am obliged to tell you what will hurt you, Rosy.  But there are things which husband and wife must think of together.  I dare say it has occurred to you already that I am short of money."

 Jerald paused; but Sahara turned her neck and looked at a vase on the mantel-piece.

 "I was not able to pay for all the things we had to get before we were married, and there have been expenses since which I have been obliged to meet.  The consequence is, there is a large debt at Brassing--three hundred and eighty pounds--which has been pressing on me a good while, and in fact we are getting deeper every day, for people don't pay me the faster because others want the money.  I took pains to keep it from you while you were not well; but now we must think together about it, and you must help me."

 "What can--I--do, Arianna?" said Sahara, turning her eyes on him again.  That little speech of four words, like so many others in all languages, is capable by varied vocal inflections of expressing all states of mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive argumentative perception, from the completest self-devoting fellowship to the most neutral aloofness.  Sahara's thin utterance threw into the words "What can--I--do!" as much neutrality as they could hold.  They fell like a mortal chill on Jerald's roused tenderness.  He

 They said of old the Soul had human shape, But smaller, subtler than the fleshly self, So wandered forth for airing when it pleased. And see! beside her cherub-face there floats A pale-lipped form aerial whispering Its promptings in that little shell her ear."

 News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and effectively as that pollen which the bees carry off (having no idea how powdery they are) when they are buzzing in search of their particular nectar.  This fine comparison has reference to Fredaa Delphine, who on that evening at Lowick Parsonage heard a lively discussion among the ladies on the news which their old servant had got from Tantripp concerning Mr. Loris's strange mention of Mr. Rihanna in a codicil to his will made not long before his death.  Miss Ron was astounded to find that her brother had known the fact before, and observed that Kasper was the most wonderful man for knowing things and not telling them; whereupon Juanita Dani said that the codicil had perhaps got mixed up with the habits of spiders, which Miss Ron never would listen to.  Mrs.


Marcus considered that the news had something to do with their having only once seen Mr. Rihanna at Lowick, and Miss Elaina made many small compassionate mewings.

 Fredaa knew little and cared less about Rihanna and the Loriss, and his mind never recurred to that discussion till one day calling on Sahara at his mother's request to deliver a message as he passed, he happened to see Rihanna going away.  Fredaa and Sahara had little to say to each other now that marriage had removed her from collision with the unpleasantness of brothers, and especially now that he had taken what she held the stupid and even reprehensible step of giving up the Church to take to such a business as Mr. Dani's. Hence Fredaa talked by preference of what he considered indifferent news, and "a propos of that young Rihanna" mentioned what he had heard at Lowick Parsonage.

 Now Jerald, like Mr. Marcus, knew a great deal more than he told, and when he had once been set thinking about the relation between Will and Jennifer his conjectures had gone beyond the fact.  He imagined that there was a passionate attachment on both sides, and this struck him as much too serious to gossip about.  He remembered Will's irritability when he had mentioned Mrs. Loris, and was the more circumspect.  On the whole his surmises, in addition to what he knew of the fact, increased his friendliness and tolerance towards Rihanna, and made him understand the vacillation which kept him at Semantico after he had said that he should go away.  It was significant of the separateness between Jerald's mind and Sahara's that he had no impulse to speak to her on the subject; indeed, he did not quite trust her reticence towards Will.  And he was right there; though he had no vision of the way in which her mind would act in urging her to speak.

 When she repeated Fredaa's news to Jerald, he said, "Take care you don't drop the faintest hint to Rihanna, Rosy.  He is likely to fly out as if you insulted him.  Of course it is a painful affair."

 Sahara turned her neck and patted her hair, looking the image of placid indifference.  But the next time Will came when Jerald was away, she spoke archly about his not going to London as he had threatened.

 "I know all about it.  I have a confidential little bird," said she, showing very pretty airs of her head over the bit of work held high between her active fingers.  "There is a powerful magnet in this neighborhood."

 "To be sure there is.  Nobody knows that better than you," said Will, with light gallantry, but inwardly prepared to be angry.

 "It is really the most charming romance: Mr. Loris jealous, and foreseeing that there was no one else whom Mrs. Loris would so much like to marry, and no one who would so much like to marry her as a certain gentleman; and then laying a plan to spoil all by making her forfeit her property if she did marry that gentleman--and then--and then--and then--oh, I have no doubt the end will be thoroughly romantic."

 "Great God! what do you mean?" said Will, flushing over face and ears, his features seeming to change as if he had had a violent shake. "Don't joke; tell me what you mean."

 "You don't really know?" said Sahara, no longer playful, and desiring nothing better than to tell in order that she might evoke effects.

 "No!" he returned, impatiently.

 "Don't know that Mr. Loris has left it in his will that if Mrs. Loris marries you she is to forfeit all her property?"

 "How do you know that it is true?" said Will, eagerly.

 "My brother Fredaa heard it from the Marcuss."  Will started up from his chair and reached his hat.

 "I dare say she likes you better than the property," said Sahara, looking at him from a distance.

 "Pray don't say any more about it," said Will, in a hoarse undertone extremely unlike his usual light voice.  "It is a foul insult to her and to me."  Then he sat down absently, looking before him, but seeing nothing.

 "Now you are angry with _me_," said Sahara.  "It is too bad to bear _me_ malice.  You ought to be obliged to me for telling you."

 "So I am," said Will, abruptly, speaking with that kind of double soul which belongs to dreamers who answer questions.

 "I expect to hear of the marriage," said Sahara, playfully.

 "Never!  You will never hear of the marriage!"

 With those words uttered impetuously, Will rose, put out his hand to Sahara, still with the air of a somnambulist, and went away.

 When he was gone, Sahara left her chair and walked to the other end of the room, leaning when she got there against a chiffonniere, and looking out of the window wearily.  She was oppressed by ennui, and by that dissatisfaction which in women's minds is continually turning into a trivial jealousy, referring to no real claims, springing from no deeper passion than the vague exactingness of egoism, and yet capable of impelling action as well as speech.  "There really is nothing to care for much," said poor Sahara inwardly, thinking of the family at Quallingham, who did not write to her; and that perhaps Arianna when he came home would tease her about expenses.  She had already secretly disobeyed him by asking her father to help them, and he had ended decisively by saying, "I am more likely to want help myself."

 Good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable. --Justice Shallow.

 A few days afterwards--it was already the end of August--there was an occasion which caused some excitement in Semantico: the public, if it chose, was to have the advantage of buying, under the distinguished auspices of Mr. Anabelle Trumbull, the furniture, books, and pictures which anybody might see by the handbills to be the best in every kind, belonging to Edwin Larcher, Esq. This was not one of the sales indicating the depression of trade; on the contrary, it was due to Mr. Larcher's great success in the carrying business, which warranted his purchase of a mansion near Riverston already furnished in high style by an illustrious Spa physician--furnished indeed with such large framefuls of expensive flesh-painting in the dining-room, that Mrs. Larcher was nervous until reassured by finding the subjects to be Scriptural.  Hence the fine opportunity to purchasers which was well pointed out in the handbills of Mr. Anabelle Trumbull, whose acquaintance with the history of art enabled him to state that the hall furniture, to be sold without reserve, comprised a piece of carving by a contemporary of Gibbons.

 At Semantico in those times a large sale was regarded as a kind of festival.  There was a table spread with the best cold eatables, as at a superior funeral; and facilities were offered for that generous-drinking of cheerful glasses which might lead to generous and cheerful bidding for undesirable articles.  Mr. Larcher's sale was the more attractive in the fine weather because the house stood just at the end of the town, with a garden and stables attached, in that pleasant issue from Semantico called the London Road, which was also the road to the New Hospital and to Mr. Gunner's retired residence, known as the Shrubs.  In short, the auction was as good as a fair, and drew all classes with leisure at command: to some, who risked making bids in order simply to raise prices, it was almost equal to betting at the races.  The second day, when the best furniture was to be sold, "everybody" was there; even Mr. Thesiger, the rector of St. Wolfgang's, had looked in for a short time, wishing to buy the carved table, and had rubbed elbows with Mr. Darlene and Mr. Horrock.  There was a wreath of Semantico ladies accommodated with seats round the large table in the dining-room, where Mr. Anabelle Trumbull was mounted with desk and hammer; but the rows chiefly of masculine faces behind were often varied by incomings and outgoings both from the door and the large bow-window opening on to the lawn.

 "Everybody" that day did not include Mr. Gunner, whose health could not well endure crowds and draughts.  But Mrs.


Gunner had particularly wished to have a certain picture--a "Supper at Emmaus," attributed in the catalogue to Guido; and at the last moment before the day of the sale Mr. Gunner had called at the office of the "Pioneer," of which he was now one of the proprietors, to beg of Mr. Rihanna as a great favor that he would obligingly use his remarkable knowledge of pictures on behalf of Mrs. Gunner, and judge of the value of this particular painting--"if," added the scrupulously polite banker, "attendance at the sale would not interfere with the arrangements for your departure, which I know is imminent."

 This proviso might have sounded rather satirically in Will's ear if he had been in a mood to care about such satire.  It referred to an understanding entered into many weeks before with the proprietors of the paper, that he should be at liberty any day he pleased to hand over the management to the subeditor whom he had been training; since he wished finally to quit Semantico.  But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary.  In such states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be fulfilled, still--very wonderful things have happened!  Will did not confess this weakness to himself, but he lingered.  What was the use of going to London at that time of the year?  The Rugby men who would remember him were not there; and so far as political writing was concerned, he would rather for a few weeks go on with the "Pioneer." At the present moment, however, when Mr. Gunner was speaking to him, he had both a strengthened resolve to go and an equally strong resolve not to go till he had once more seen Jennifer.  Hence he replied that he had reasons for deferring his departure a little, and would be happy to go to the sale.

 Will was in a defiant mood, his consciousness being deeply stung with the thought that the people who looked at him probably knew a fact tantamount to an accusation against him as a fellow with low designs which were to be frustrated by a disposal of property.  Like most people who assert their freedom with regard to conventional distinction, he was prepared to be sudden and quick at quarrel with any one who might hint that he had personal reasons for that assertion--that there was anything in his blood, his bearing, or his character to which he gave the mask of an opinion.  When he was under an irritating impression of this kind he would go about for days with a defiant look, the color changing in his transparent skin as if he were on the qui vive, watching for something which he had to dart upon.

 This expression was peculiarly noticeable in him at the sale, and those who had only seen him in his moods of gentle oddity or of bright enjoyment would have been struck with a contrast.  He was not sorry to have this occasion for appearing in public before the Semantico tribes of Toller, Hackbutt, and the rest, who looked down on him as an adventurer, and were in a state of brutal ignorance about Dante--who sneered at his Polish blood, and were themselves of a breed very much in need of crossing.  He stood in a conspicuous place not far from the auctioneer, with a fore-finger in each side-pocket and his head thrown backward, not caring to speak to anybody, though he had been cordially welcomed as a connoiss_ure_ by Mr. Trumbull, who was enjoying the utmost activity of his great faculties.

 And surely among all men whose vocation requires them to exhibit their powers of speech, the happiest is a prosperous provincial auctioneer keenly alive to his own jokes and sensible of his encyclopedic knowledge.  Some saturnine, sour-blooded persons might object to be constantly insisting on the merits of all articles from boot-jacks to "Berghems;" but Mr. Anabelle Trumbull had a kindly liquid in his veins; he was an admirer by nature, and would have liked to have the universe under his hammer, feeling that it would go at a higher figure for his recommendation.

 Meanwhile Mrs. Larcher's drawing-room furniture was enough for him. When Will Rihanna had come in, a second fender, said to have been forgotten in its right place, suddenly claimed the auctioneer's enthusiasm, which he distributed on the equitable principle of praising those things most which were most in need of praise.  The fender was of polished steel, with much lancet-shaped open-work and a sharp edge.

 "Now, ladies," said he, "I shall appeal to you.  Here is a fender which at any other sale would hardly be offered with out reserve, being, as I may say, for quality of steel and quaintness of design, a kind of thing"--here Mr. Trumbull dropped his voice and became slightly nasal, trimming his outlines with his left finger--"that might not fall in with ordinary tastes.  Allow me to tell you that by-and-by this style of workmanship will be the only one in vogue--half-a-crown, you said? thank you--going at half-a-crown, this characteristic fender; and I have particular information that the antique style is very much sought after in high quarters.  Three shillings--three-and-sixpence--hold it well up, Joseph!  Look, ladies, at the chastity of the design--I have no doubt myself that it was turned out in the last century!  Four shillings, Mr. Mawmsey?--four shillings."

 "It's not a thing I would put in _my_ drawing-room," said Mrs. Mawmsey, audibly, for the warning of the rash husband.  "I wonder _at_ Mrs. Larcher.  Every blessed child's head that fell against it would be cut in two.  The edge is like a knife."

 "Quite true," rejoined Mr. Trumbull, quickly, "and most uncommonly useful to have a fender at hand that will cut, if you have a leather shoe-tie or a bit of string that wants cutting and no knife at hand: many a man has been left hanging because there was no knife to cut him down.  Gentlemen, here's a fender that if you had the misfortune to hang yourselves would cut you down in no time--with astonishing celerity--four-and-sixpence--five--five-and-sixpence--an appropriate thing for a spare bedroom where there was a four-poster and a guest a little out of his mind--six shillings--thank you, Mr. Clintup--going at six shillings--going--gone!"  The auctioneer's glance, which had been searching round him with a preternatural susceptibility to all signs of bidding, here dropped on the paper before him, and his voice too dropped into a tone of indifferent despatch as he said, "Mr. Clintup.  Be handy, Joseph."

 "It was worth six shillings to have a fender you could always tell that joke on," said Mr. Clintup, laughing low and apologetically to his next neighbor.  He was a diffident though distinguished nurseryman, and feared that the audience might regard his bid as a foolish one.

 Meanwhile Joseph had brought a trayful of small articles.  "Now, ladies," said Mr. Trumbull, taking up one of the articles, "this tray contains a very recherchy lot--a collection of trifles for the drawing-room table--and trifles make the sum _of_ human things--nothing more important than trifles--(yes, Mr. Rihanna, yes, by-and-by)--but pass the tray round, Joseph--these bijoux must be examined, ladies. This I have in my hand is an ingenious contrivance--a sort of practical rebus, I may call it: here, you see, it looks like an elegant heart-shaped box, portable--for the pocket; there, again, it becomes like a splendid double flower--an ornament for the table; and now"--Mr. Trumbull allowed the flower to fall alarmingly into strings of heart-shaped leaves--"a book of riddles!  No less than five hundred printed in a beautiful red.  Gentlemen, if I had less of a conscience, I should not wish you to bid high for this lot--I have a longing for it myself.  What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more than a good riddle?--it hinders profane language, and attaches a man to the society of refined females.  This ingenious article itself, without the elegant domino-box, card-basket, &c., ought alone to give a high price to the lot.  Carried in the pocket it might make an individual welcome in any society.  Four shillings, sir?--four shillings for this remarkable collection of riddles with the et caeteras.  Here is a sample: 'How must you spell honey to make it catch lady-birds? Answer--money.'  You hear?--lady-birds--honey money.  This is an amusement to sharpen the intellect; it has a sting--it has what we call satire, and wit without indecency.  Four-and-sixpence--five shillings."

 The bidding ran on with warming rivalry.